Where Do We Go To
by Neale
Summary: Another rambling post finale tale with a slightly different perspective, starting with a rehash of how Charah got to be together, and what Morgan did to derail that. A few flashbacks to previous times to fill in the holes on how things came to be, as well.
1. Instant Karma

**Instant Karma's gonna get you**  
><strong>Gonna knock you right on the head<strong>  
><strong>You better get yourself together<strong>  
><strong>Pretty soon you're gonna be dead<strong>

**This is my first attempt, so it'll probably bomb, all the more so as I expect some won't like my take on Mortard the Despicable ;^) IMHO two characters never really paid for what they did in the series, Shaw got a small dose of what he deserved, but the other one never did, so here goes.**

**The bulk of this is about the path to Charah proper, but Morgan gets his comeuppance.**

**This is set a little bit after the finale, Chuck and Sarah are back living together in the apartment but he's giving her the space she needs while he tries to help her recover what she's lost. Sarah's trying to make sense of the shards of memories and feelings she has swirling around inside herself.**

**As per the usual disclaimers, I have no rights to any of the characters portrayed.**

They sat at either end of the sofa, in a companionable silence. Sarah looked up from the photo albums she was paging through to Chuck, working away at something on his tablet and knew that they'd done this often, knew the comfort that came from just being there together, it felt right, and safe, but she just wished she could remember it. It seemed that the memories that were coming back in bits here and there were only of significant events that left had their mark and arose when something triggered them, but the every day routines that made up their life together, nothing. She often found herself going through the motions of what they did, but not knowing exactly why until the end result showed, frustrating.

She knew she could ask Chuck about it, but it felt so damn stupid "what do we do when we're sitting at home?", really? Besides which, she knew that what he (both of them) was desperate for her to remember was what they had together, everyone, including Chuck and herself in the mission log videos that Casey gave her, was telling her about the love that they had for each other and how long they'd loved each other. She could even feel it inside of her, the warmth and need she had for the man who was in reach if she wanted to reach out (and who put aside everything to make sure he was there for anything she wanted), but aside from those fragments of memory that rose to the surface when something triggered them, she didn't have the memories to make sense of those feelings.

This was just pissing her off, she wanted her life back! She decided to try a new tack and put the album she was holding down to turn to Chuck. "Chuck?"

He saved what he was working on and put the tablet down to give her his attention.

"I was thinking, maybe I'll have better luck getting things back if I understand how we got to where we were before... well, before Quinn. One thing I've been having trouble with is why it took so long for us to be together, you've told me how you fell for me, and when you were with that little girl yesterday I actually remembered coming into the Buy More to engage you, how everything was going to plan until that stupid man barged in and interrupted us because the camera wouldn't play back the recording of his daughter's ballet recital (because he didn't put a tape in the camera), I was sure I could get it back on track until you looked down at the little girl trying not to cry because her father had screwed up filming her recital, and I was surprised when you blew me off to go and save the day for her, but the way you told her the "secret" that real ballerinas ARE tall to give her confidence AND managed to recreate the video of that moment for her was adorable, my heart melted and I was in over my head, which was why I took the chance to bolt when Harry Tang intercepted you, as I was too flustered to play the engagement the way I was supposed to, anyway" she smiled at the dopey grin on his face, apparently she'd never told him the detail of that, just "I fell for you sometime after you fixed my phone and before you started diffusing bombs with computer viruses", "anyway, as we obviously fell for each other right away, why did it take us 3 years to be together?"

Chuck sat back, working out how to explain it to her "For a start, do you remember the rules against handlers being involved with their assets? I hope you do, because I got my face rubbed in it for years. Whenever we got close (except that time that we both thought we were going to die and you kissed me, when we thought that I was going to be released when the new intersect came up, so you agreed to go on a date with me, and when we ran away to save my dad), you'd pull back and repeat the rules about handlers not being allowed to get involved, which was confirmed when Beckman invoked the 49B and you got dismissed, just before I got taken and you came back to save me, so we got you re-assigned."

"Also, you did a good job of hiding your feelings for me (from me, anyway, other people could see it, apparently, but I took what you said as the truth, especially after you told me that we had no future while we were under the effects of the truth serum). There were a few times when I "broke up" with you because I couldn't handle being with you all the time, but not be WITH you."

"On top of that, I had other people like Bryce presenting what seemed to be good arguments that your feelings for me were endangering you, as well as me, so I "broke up" with you for that reason as well."

"I was seeing other people a few times when I was trying for a "normal" relationship because I couldn't be with you, Lou, Jill and Hannah, and basically turned my back on you, thinking that that was what you wanted, or what was best, I don't know. You were involved with a few others as well, Bryce, Cole, and Shaw, I thought that they were better for you, could make you happy, and tried to get out of your way, mostly."

As Chuck was talking about their deviations from the path to each other, Sarah had memories come back, more recollections than flashes, she remembered how he'd arrested Jill and broken up with Hannah for her, and she asked him whether they'd discussed that both Cole and Bryce had left knowing that she'd chosen him over them? "Cole asked me to go with him when he left, but he could tell how much I cared about you, and understood why I said no to him, he WAS a bit surprised about losing the girl to you, though. I was going to tell you that night, but you were intent on telling me why you couldn't move in with me, so I didn't get a chance to tell you then, and Bryce called me on the earpiece when we were in Ellie's wedding to ask, "you're not coming with me, are you?", already knowing what I would say."

Chuck replied "Bryce told me that you weren't going with him in the Intersect Room, but he died before he could tell me more, I didn't know about Cole, I thought he was telling me that he wasn't giving up trying to win you over." A look of remorse passed over his face as he thought of Bryce, and the missed chances, but his heart lifted to hear that she'd chosen him over the "real" spy, twice. After a pause to think about those missed chances, Chuck went on.

"We almost made it a couple of times, the closest was when we ran away to save my dad (I never did get around to killing Morgan for stealing the condom from my wallet so I had to go out to try and get more and got caught by Casey), but we came back and got caught up in the system again. Then, when I was getting to the point where I was about to be an agent, you thought you'd lost the person that you'd met and fell for, and turned away from me (especially after you thought I'd actually completed my Red Test), and Shaw was there to take you away. That is until Casey told you the truth about my Red Test and you came over to find Morgan tied up with game controllers and me drunk, in my underwear, with a bottle of scotch and a plastic guitar, and you told me that you loved me, well I asked if you did and you said yes, 4 times actually." That memory brought a smile to his face.

"Actually, considering how many times we went AWOL and were accused of treason for what we did to save each other, it's amazing that we aren't both buried in some black site for the rest of our lives."

Sarah had to talk about Shaw, and what happened "About Shaw, you're right about me being worried that the guy that I fell for was disappearing, but that was only part of the problem, I didn't know who I was any more, I was conflicted about my feelings for you, I was jealous of you and Hannah, I couldn't look at you or talk to you without melting and I was totally unhinged, so I actually fell for Shaw's seduction technique, and didn't realise it until later. I couldn't believe that I fell for it but I did, he came in, knowing that I was in love with you, gave me a sob story about also falling in love with a spy who got killed, and then proceeded to come onto me with the textbook moves and I STILL fell for it, wait, what was that about the condom?"

Chuck stopped to think about the Shaw thing and held her hand for a bit, but then said "Oh, the condom, do you remember when I told you to stay there that morning in Barstow, I went to my wallet to get the condom I had there and found an IOU note from Morgan, who'd taken it, so I went out to try and buy more and Casey caught me. I guess I really shouldn't listen to Morgan, anyway, that has made me go crazy and sent me down the wrong rabbit hole more than a few times", she looked at him, waiting for him to continue, and when he didn't asked "What do you mean?" with her eyes narrowing.

Slightly freaked out by the look she was giving him, he "um"ed and "ah"ed a little and then tried to put it into words, as he did so the words came as a torrent "Well he's always seen "us" as taking things away from HIM, so he's always made comments and interruptions, like when he called in the middle of our first "date" (when we were trying to diffuse the bomb, actually), wanting me to tell him details of what we were doing, and when we were going on our first mission he was trying to tell me that things were going too fast because he thought it was another date, then the next night when he turned up for our dinner with Ellie and Awesome and said "I thought you we had plans tonight" and asked what you were doing there."

"Then when he said "If you can get Sarah, that means anything is possible", as if there was no way that there could be something real and special between US, when we were planning the "Night of Morgan" at the time of the Mei-Ling incident he told me "She has to prove to ME that she has something to bring to this relationship", and later said to Ellie that they should force me to break up with you, he tried to pretend it was a joke but Ellie thought he sounded serious."

"I think what got me the most was the time you were on Lon Kirk's boat, after we'd kissed when we thought we were going to die with the bomb that wasn't a bomb, and Bryce came back so things were awkward, he called me to tell me that Kirk was ALL over you, really greasing you up, working up a lather and creating quite a scene, then just hung up because his lobster had arrived, so I rushed down there and we had all that with you and the General and everyone else thinking that I'd faked a flash to stop you completing your mission with Kirk, but what was worse was that he told me later that he didn't know if it was you because he wasn't really looking at your face, yeah, I really lost it that time, maybe things wouldn't have gone as bad as they did if I hadn't over-reacted then."

"Oh, and when we had the thing where Fulcrum bugged the Buy More and Awesome was going to propose to Ellie, so he gave me his Grandmother's ring to hold for him, he found the ring in my locker and thought I was going to propose to you, so he took the ring to try and stop me proposing and going off to have a life with you."

"When we thought that I was going to be free and not your asset any more because the new intersect was supposed to go live, so we were going out on a real date, he turned up when I was about to leave to get you and said that he knew I had to go see you, but insisted that we spend 5 to 45 minutes talking about his Call of duty strategy, mind you that came in handy later to convince Colt that we had them surrounded with a full strike team when they had me, as I called him and got him to re-iterate what the Call of Duty strike team was over the phone."

"When you were on that date with Shaw, he was going on about "he can fill out a pair of slacks, a real stallion", I had to point out that you were the woman that I love to stop him talking."

"When you and Shaw were heading off to Paris, he was telling me "Shaw's going to get Sarah, you're going to go all willie nillie, tie me up again and drink yourself into oblivion" and "You know what else he is, a stud, and 99% of the time that guy gets the girl" and complaining that I'd stuffed up his life because he wasn't getting to go to Rome with me."

"Just before you moved in, he was making cracks like "You're dating a leggy valkyrie who has an aversion to clothing" and kept going on about us having sex and making cracks about how inconsiderate it was to him, because he wasn't getting any."

"When I was having those nightmares, he was making digs about you not believing me about the dreams and thinking that I was crazy."

"When I was looking for my mother, and you and Casey were off on missions, he was sending all those sexting messages on my phone from home and especially when we were in Volkoff in Moscow, and asking you to show things."

"When we were doing the mission in Milan, he was making cracks about your not unpacking, and talking about it being the Achilles heel that could destroy our relationship and how you'd bolt if I tried to talk about it."

"After the accidental proposal incident in the Castle, he kept pushing me to go through the "101 Conversations before I DO", which came close to breaking us, until we talked Premier Goya and Hortensia through their relationship crisis, by talking about our own."

"When you arrested my mother to protect me, he kept telling me that I needed to cool down before I talked to you, which of course made things worse when you found out that I'd talked to him and other people, but not you."

"At that first proposal attempt in the restaurant, you told me about how your parents' proposal in a similar restaurant was such a disaster, so I told him that we had to call it off, but instead of helping me get rid of everything, he just said it couldn't be done and hung onto the balloons, carriage, and everything, which was why we had to duck out the side entrance to avoid all of that."

"When you were suggesting that we elope to avoid all the stress that my family was putting on us for the big wedding, he actually said "You giving Sarah what she wants and me not getting what I want is not, necessarily, compromise, the point is and I'm sorry to say this to you as you've never been able to do this, but you have to put your foot down, just say no" when I told him that you wanted us to elope." I know that I wanted the wedding, too, but HIS view was that what you wanted for our wedding was less important than what HE wanted."

"When I was trying to find you the perfect house quietly, so I could surprise you with it, he steamrollered over any attempts to keep the house hunt quiet, letting you know that we were up to something, which caused friction between us."

"On that mission when he went in with you and Casey, he was going on about the guy getting handsie "with my girl", he amended it to "our" and then "your" later, but that was obviously what he thought at the time."

"When we all agreed that he needed a handler to get his overblown ego in check, he came out with a lot of crap about you pulling the wool over my eyes and handling me by telling me to be his handler, then basically forced me to follow him when he ran into Schneider's making us spend nearly all the money we had on a bail out mission."

As Chuck was talking, he didn't notice Sarah's reaction, as the more he brought up, the more stunned he was by the realisation of how much Morgan had tried to undermine things with Sarah, but she was flashing on the related incidents that she remembered as he told her and it was all running through her head in a flood, like the time that they were talking as he was walking her out about how they'd be expected to kiss at that point if they were "really dating" and they almost did, but she saw Morgan walking up to them out of the corner of her eye, so she broke off and left, the way that he was trying to dive a wedge between us in that game of Know Ya!, and afterwards as they were talking about sharing personal details, and Bryce, and where they were going, he just walked up and interrupted them with a flimsy excuse, on the "Night of Morgan" he made sure he was between them to keep them apart, and he kept touching her, he always did! Chuck never did that more than was necessary or appropriate, even when he thought they were on that first real date, he didn't do more than touch her on the arm, and generally would only hold her hand or put his arm around her, but Morgan thought he had some right to put his hands on her. Then the time at the Halloween party when they said that they needed a bit of time alone to talk and went to Chuck's room and he barged in straight away with a supposedly urgent need, then sat down to casually chat to Chuck once he'd interrupted them.

Yeah, the Valkyrie comment, that was when he was ogling my chest and making references to Vitamin Ds, Vitamin Cs and jugs. What I was getting from Chuck's phone in those sexting messages from Morgan was disgusting. He told me Chuck and I were in a relationship crisis over his mother, tried to convince me that I needed to give him space rather than talk it out and put his hand on my chest! Even when he was terrified that Shaw was alive, he was staring at my chest when we talked, he was always ogling me like those other perverts. So all the Nos and arguments about eloping were because Morgan wanted to make sure he got what he wanted in MY wedding? Telling me smugly that we had a lot to talk about after he convinced Chuck that OUR wedding invites had to be changed because they didn't suit HIM?

Yeah, he was going on about that guy being handsie because he was staring at my butt and the guy's hand was getting in the way. And then he stole the big contract we got from Beckman and ran off to Verbanski with it, that almost ruined us until we recovered the info. And the final straw was that what he did while he had the intersect set in motion the issues with Quinn that resulted in me having my memories of of my time with Chuck erased and my trying to kill Chuck and the others, which came very close to taking our life together, the only one that was worth living for, away.

Each memory flash hit her harder than before and her head was splitting, while a rage she couldn't control was building in her. The flashes kept hitting her as Chuck was talking, and the rage kept building inside her until she spat "Bastard!" and turned to run out the front door and across the courtyard, shouting "Morgan!" as she kicked in the front door of Morgan and Alex's apartment. Morgan jumped up with a guilty look on his face and was backing away from her, trying to make placating gestures and sounds as she stalked him around the living room. "Sarah, what's wrong?" "Sarah, I wouldn't do that!" "Sarah, I'm your friend!" Alex sat where she was on the couch with a stunned look on her face as she listened. Sarah's voice was deceptively controlled as she asked him why he had been trying to destroy her relationship with Chuck for the past 5 years, why he had been making such an effort to undermine her and them with interruptions and snide comments to Chuck, to her, and anyone else that he thought could further his malicious agenda the entire time they'd been together, but the shattered front door argued against that control. Morgan plastered a fake smile on his face as he tried to scurry away from her and squeaked when she grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall. Alex rushed at her to try and get her off Morgan but she was knocked out and sent flying with a fist to the face. Sarah looked back at Morgan and started going through the things that she now knew he'd done over the past 5 years, many of the things he'd been doing in the early days she hadn't recognised at the time as she'd just put them down as him being infantile, and all the little things that she'd ignored as being "normal" with Morgan, but now, looking at them after 5 years of a real if rocky relationship with Chuck, she could put them into perspective and she was NOT happy with what she saw.

She realised after a while that Chuck had came in and put his hand on her arm, asking her gently to stop, she looked at him and tried to make him understand that she couldn't until she had answers to curb her rage, but she gave in when he said that he needed those answers too, but killing Morgan wouldn't give them the answers, and she threw Morgan onto the couch, looking distastefully down at the puddle of urine that was on the floor beneath where she'd been holding him against the wall.

Chuck went to check on Alex, knowing that Sarah would be devastated if she'd really hurt her when she came down from this rage, once he'd ascertained that she was OK, just knocked out, he came back to stand beside Sarah in front of Morgan and held her hand as they began questioning him. At first he just tried to pretend that he didn't know what they were talking about, but changed his tune when Chuck had to restrain Sarah from attacking him again, and he started whining his petty attempts to justify himself at them.

They questioned him for a couple of hours, stopping only to see to Alex when she came to, she waved them off when they wanted to get her to the hospital as she wanted to hear what was going on. All they got from Morgan in that time was proof that he was prepared to do whatever it took to protect what he believed was his right to expect, and that he had absolutely no remorse about trying to destroy Chuck, Sarah, Ellie and Devon, Alex's, or anyone's, happiness (Chuck also brought up what he'd done to Ellie and Devon, Alex and others in the course of the questioning), as long as he got what he wanted. Alex was conscious when they talked about the Lon Kirk incident and how much he'd exaggerated what was going on, about a woman who he wasn't even sure was Sarah, to turn Chuck away from her, and how he'd stolen the ring that he thought that Chuck was planning to give to her when he asked her to marry him, to prevent that happening, and as the excuses went on, her expression was turning to disgust as well. The final straw was when Chuck asked him how he could do this when he knew how much Chuck loved and needed Sarah, and he just whined "Chuck, she was taking you away from me man, you were just dumping everything we'd had since we were kids to be with her, I couldn't let you do that."

All three of them just looked at him after that for a while, and then Chuck said "You need to look for a new job, I'll have someone drop your things off to you and remove any Carmichael equipment from the apartment, and I'd suggest that you find somewhere else to live, where we can't see you, I won't try to stop Sarah if she decides that she needs to do something to you for what you've done." With that, he put his arm around Sarah and they left.

Back in their apartment, Chuck held Sarah as she cried out her anguish at what had been done to her, to them, by someone they thought they could trust and who cared about them, the heartache was all the more rending as it brought up what her father had done to her most of her life, what everyone but Chuck, basically, had done to her. It took a long time to release 30 years on anguish, and she felt empty when it was finally done, but it was cathartic, and looking up into his brown eyes she saw the same all consuming love that she felt for him, so she went to sleep in his arms knowing that things would be all right, they could have their future together.

The next day, they sat to discuss the issues around what happened with Morgan, neither of them had any question that the outcome with him was appropriate, but the incident had wider repercussions. Chuck asked whether they were likely to have a similar incident with Casey, given that he had made similar comments in the early years and had caused as many roadblocks and doubts for them in that time, she thought about it and said no, she knew that he'd constantly heckled both of them in the early days, but once they'd committed to each other he'd pretty much stopped that, mostly. Also, he wasn't ogling her and touching her all the time, at first he'd treated her as a partner and a professional, and afterwards as a friend, and more importantly, he wasn't supposedly a lifelong best friend, he was there in sufferance to do a job at the start, and he was just like her when they arrived, believing that emotions were something that had to be stamped out, she turned to Chuck with a smile at that point, saying "You know that he came to my room after you let me get away at the house, don't you? He brought me the DVD of my mission logs so I could see me telling my story myself, and told me that you'd made us both a bit soft, that being together as a team had changed him as well as me, and that we'd become friends." Chuck hadn't known that, but wasn't too surprised, as he'd known that Casey had changed a lot too.

Then Chuck brought up the bigger issue, the Intersect, obviously the version she had wasn't totally suppressed as she was getting the flashes that triggered her last night. Given that they knew how much damage that that version of the Intersect could do, it wasn't safe for her to leave it in there, so they had to get it out. They set up a teleconference with General Beckman, but her initial joy at seeing them together faded when they told her what had happened. She promised to make arrangements to get a proper suppression device to them ASAP, and then asked if they knew where things were going from there. They looked at each other and it was Sarah who spoke "We ARE together, where we are supposed to be, I still don't have most of my memories but the more I'm with Chuck, the more that are coming back, I have the feelings inside for Chuck, but I can't put the feelings together with memories at this point. I'm hoping that all the memories will come back in time, if not soon, but I don't need the memories to know that I do love him, and want to be with him." She looked at him with the unspoken question of whether that was enough, and what he wanted, and he just gave the classic Chuck smile and kissed her, forgetting or uncaring that the General was sitting there looking at them. After a while the General cleared her throat and they looked back at the screen, she was trying to look serious but her happiness that things were working out showed through as she said that she'd let them know when to expect the suppression device, and told them to let her know when they were ready to discuss their professional future, cancelling the call in her usual manner.

They had a bit of discussion about what the General had said about professional future, but agreed that they had to get THEM sorted before they worried about work, especially when Chuck noted that the General had their funds unfrozen, so they didn't need to worry about that for now.

Alex came to tell them that she was leaving and would be staying with her mother until she worked out what she was going to do. Sarah apologised for hitting her in the middle of everything and told her to come to them if she needed anything, as she, with her father, were still a very big part of their family, but she told her not to worry, she understood everything now and just needed time to think, and she asked them to tell Casey where she'd be if he contacted them.

They watched Alex head out with heavy hearts and knew that she'd be doing it tough, but they also knew that she'd come to them if she needed anything while her father was off looking for Gertrude. As they closed the door Sarah felt lighter, somehow, for all the trauma, she and Chuck once again had a direction that they'd be heading together, Sarah didn't imagine that it would be an easy journey, but she knew that they were both committed to doing it together, and together, well, they could do anything.


	2. Moving On

**This is following on from Instant Karma.**

**Usual disclaimer, don't own or hold any rights to the characters.**

The day after the Morgan incident, Chuck and Sarah were both still relatively shell shocked, not managing to do much other than making the urgent call to the General, and seeing Alex off.

2 days after the incident Chuck sat Sarah down to discuss something which he was a bit hesitant about, as he had a very strong recollection of the "No secrets, no lies" agreement that they'd made in Volkoff's Moscow headquarters, even if Sarah didn't as yet, and he had to admit that this felt like he'd been keeping a secret from her. The first thing he'd done when the General had unfrozen their accounts was to buy the house he'd found and they'd decided would be their's, by paying the asking price without haggling he'd got possession early, and had been remodelling the house, new kitchen and other things, along the lines that they'd agreed they wanted. So they had the house soon after Sarah came back, but he hadn't mentioned it to her as yet, as he thought being in their apartment, which had many of the past 5 year's of their memories in it, would better help her recover her memories.

That night on the beach, they were both disappointed, though not surprised, that the stupid idea of "one magical kiss" fixing everything didn't work, but the soft, gentle kiss lasted for over 10 minutes, and dispelled any doubts in Sarah that she had deep and inescapable feelings (and, love?) for this wonderful stranger, her husband. They talked for quite a while after the kiss and Chuck made his case for her to move back into the apartment (with no agenda to push her into anything), in hope that being in familiar surroundings would help her recover her memories. Given the fact that being with and talking to Chuck was already doing that, she agreed that it was a good plan and decided to go with it.

When she moved back in a couple of days later after tidying up her affairs, Chuck had moved into the guest room (Ellie and Devon's old room), so she could have their room, and set up the electronics that he couldn't live without in there. Being Chuck, he wanted to give Sarah space to set the pace that she was comfortable with, and take it slow (a phrase that she was sure had come up many times in the past from her, as it resonated so strongly within her). He also raised the question of whether she wanted him to remove all the cameras etc, his hesitation when he asked the question made her ask what his reservation on that was, so he explained that he was thinking if he could see if she was having nightmares or anything, he could try to help her. At that she looked at him, trying to work out how he knew about the nightmares, and she realised that he just knew her so well that he could tell that she was having them. So they agreed to leave the cameras in, but remove any external feeds, so the monitoring was only from within the apartment.

She did have the nightmares, of course, and he'd come in and hold her until they went away, and then go back to the other room, unless she asked him to stay. That arrangement was in place for a few weeks, until she convinced him that she could sleep better if he was in the bed with her, because she felt safe in his arms.

The fact that she knew that she would have to work hard when the time came to convince him that she was ready to have sex, no matter how much she could feel that he wanted to, was just part of that endearing safety bubble that he created. When that time did come, the effort to convince him was well worth it, and the memories of the train trip from Paris to Zurich that came with it were almost worth the price of admission by themselves.

So far, the plan to use the apartment to trigger her memories had worked reasonably well, but with the Morgan incident, those memories were tainted to a degree, so with Ellie, Devon and Clara in Chicago, Casey off looking for Gertrude and Alex living with Kathleen for the moment, it seemed that the time could be right to move on, they had a past there, but their future wasn't, so they agreed to move to the house. The Castle, Buy More and Orange Orange were also part of a past that they'd decided to move on from and had associations to things that they wanted to put behind them, so they arranged to pack up everything in preparation to sell them off as well.

Over the next week, they were pretty busy, meeting with the General to get the remnants of the intersect in Sarah's head properly suppressed, starting to pack up the apartment and Castle, and working out a plan about how to get rid of the properties.

The other task that they had to get to work on was Sarah's plan for changing Carmichael Industries into a Counter Cyber-Terrorism business, when they started packing up Castle, they found the paperwork and files she'd been working on the morning that Quinn took Chuck, and it was the next step once they moved, and got rid of the old premises, as Casey was away at the moment, and there was no work for Carmichael Industries, so it was the right time for out with the old, in with the new.

They chased down Casey to get his agreement before they pulled the plug on Castle, and to talk to him about Alex and the Morgan incident, he was furious about what Morgan had done to Alex, and them, and angry that he'd missed all the signs until they pointed out that he wasn't around when most of these things happened, with them or with Alex. Of course, he was on the first plane home to look after his little girl, and his phone call to Morgan, telling him what he was going to do to him, ensured that Morgan had disappeared by the time Casey got back. He could have traced him down easily enough, but Alex convinced him to let it go, so he consoled himself with the knowledge that Morgan would be hiding and looking over his shoulder, probably for the rest of his miserable life. Once he was back, they discussed all their plans and he agreed that it was time for Echo Park, like the Creepy Cousin, to be in the rear view mirrors, so a quick house hunt found a comfortable little place for him and Alex to share, close to the new Casa Bartwoski.

Part of the reason that they had to sit down with Casey before proceeding with the plans was that they called for him to be a partner in Carmichael Industries, not an employee. They were a team through everything, and one thing that was brought into focus by what happened with Sarah was that Casey wasn't a robot that followed orders any more, either. He couldn't go back to what he was before, any more than Sarah could. They'd achieved amazing things as a team over the past 5 years, and they needed the team together to do that, so it was time to make it official. As expected, it was a hard sell to get through to Casey, but they cheated and enlisted Alex's help to win him over. Like most little girls, she could wrap Daddy around her little finger when she wanted, and she could be quite the actress.

The bribe that they offered him in regard to the Creepy Cousin didn't hurt, either. Casey liked blowing things up almost as much as he liked shooting things, and hated the Buy More, so as there was no safe way to sell the Buy More etc off as it was without a lot of questions being asked, he got to engineer the operation to blow up the Creepy Cousin, and everything underneath it. He staged it as a convincing accident at night, leaving them free to collect the insurance and sell off the real estate with the evidence destroyed. So many gas related explosions in Burbank, so many. They had to talk him out of him being there to celebrate when the Buy More went up, though, pointing out that it would be hard to sell as an unexpected accident if one of the key players was standing there with a cigar in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, that would be unprofessional.

With all of them, including Alex, working, it took 3-4 weeks to pack up and move everything in the respective apartments and Castle. Most of the "plant and equipment" went into secure storage, they moved into their respective houses, clean up operation, or rather "accident", went off as planned and Echo Park and the Buy More Crater were sold. Between the insurance payout and what they got for the real estate, they made a significant profit on Buy More etc, and they sold the apartment complex to a developer, so they made more than expected by selling the apartments individually, after taking out the cost of the 2 houses from the proceeds, they still had rather more than they expected to spend on buying and outfitting the new Carmichael Industries headquarters.

So, after a month and a half of frantic work from all of them (as Sarah had told her, Alex was part of the family now, perhaps not one of the three partners in CI, but definitely part of the family), they'd closed out the Echo Park and Buy More segments of their lives, were comfortably settled into their new houses, and were planning the new start for Carmichael Industries and all of them.

Casey held off going back to Gertrude's operations in Europe while they were hunting a property for CI's new headquarters, and until he was sure that Alex was OK, once those items were sorted, he went back to wind things up, on the understanding that he was to be called if he was needed and he'd drop everything and get back ASAP.

As far as the re-fitting of the CI offices went, Chuck handled the technology, Sarah and Chuck handled all the security issues (with Sarah taking the lead), and Sarah, Chuck and Alex collaborated on the décor (which was easier without Casey around, Chuck was primarily raised by Ellie alone, so he didn't have any overt macho issues to get past, and Sarah and Alex were strong, capable women with professional outlooks, which made them a perfect team to work together to create an inviting, professional space that was gender neutral and masked all the high level security and technology that existed in the place, they did "butch up" Casey's office to suit his tastes, but that was the only space in the building that got any special treatment in that respect).

With the offices sorted out while Casey was winding up his affairs in Europe, Chuck and Sarah got things moving on generating business engagements and training (Sarah trained Alex and Chuck in the areas she was best at, and Chuck trained Alex and Sarah in the areas he was best at, Casey would be added to the mix when he returned, and they all knew how much fun that would be.) They would have to add staff when the business started ramping up, but for now they had the core team that they needed for the start-up, baby steps.

They'd settled into the new routines and it felt almost normal, Sarah was drinking her coffee and tidying things up while she waited for Chuck to get ready to leave, as usual (he was always the first up but she ended up waiting for him to get ready to go). She was feeling a little queasy and started to call out to ask Chuck whether he thought whether the pizza that they'd had could have been off when she had a memory float up of a very similar experience and she stopped suddenly, "oh no."


	3. Baby Steps

**OK, the way things are, Morgan's gone, Buy More and Castle are gone, and so is Echo Park, Casey's a core part of things but is elsewhere for now, and Ellie, Devon and Clara are in Chicago.**

****Usual disclaimer, don't own or hold any rights to the characters.****

Sarah was quiet on the trip to the office, but just said she was tired when Chuck asked if she was OK. Inside, she was bouncing all over the place, terrified, excited, happy, worried, she wasn't used to being so out of control. She knew that she wanted a baby, with Chuck, but definitely wasn't sure she was ready for it, she didn't know herself as well as the people around her did yet, and with trying to get their reborn business off the ground at the moment, it was just the wrong time to be thinking of this. Besides, she'd thought that the contraceptive implants that she'd had took that worry off the table, until she realised that they (and she) were hoping, and therefore trying, for a baby, so she would have let them lapse some time before she thought she was pregnant before. She tried to settle herself and make a plan, given what they went through before she wasn't going to try and hide it from Chuck again, but she wanted to know before she talked to him, so she had to do something about getting a test without his knowing.

When they got in, they went to their respective offices and started in on the day's jobs, when she saw that Chuck was engrossed in his work, she wandered off to Alex's office, normal enough as she was mentoring Alex. Once there, she kept one eye on Chuck's office as she asked Alex if she could do her a favour and get her a pregnancy test without Chuck finding out. This was easier as Alex knew about the previous pregnancy "scare", and she understood that there was no way for Sarah to get one without Chuck finding out, if he found out that Alex got one, it could be easily passed off as being for herself. Once the plan was sorted out, Alex checked Chuck's office before asking whether she wanted this, and Sarah surprised herself as well as Alex by smiling and saying "yes" without any hesitation at all. With a laugh and a hug she went back to her office, trying to keep a smile off her face.

She found the means to hide the smile a few minutes later. Before the "accident" at the Buy More, they'd set up on-going surveillance on the area, to get a warning if any of their old adversaries came looking for them, one of Sarah's jobs as Chief Security Officer for CI was to oversee the monitoring of those, and other, security feeds. When she scanned the feeds and got to the current image, she saw a figure in the car park that shouldn't have been there, so she turned and called through the connecting door to ask Chuck if he had a sec?

When Chuck came in, she pointed at the image standing dejectedly in the car park with a couple of suitcases beside him, looking at the building site where the Buy More had been. He leaned in, asking "Is that Jeff?", to a response of "That's why I called you in." The last both of them heard, Jeff and Lester were in Europe, living large as Jeffster, which begged the question of why Jeff was here, looking like his dog had just died. Chuck asked permission to use Sarah's PC, to which she rolled her chair back to give him room while he quickly searched for information, bringing up a few articles and a youtube video of Lester saying that he wouldn't be held back by Jeff any more, so he was going solo. Given what they knew of Jeff, he would have been heartbroken by the betrayal and given up, which was why he was standing there in the car park now.

Chuck looked at Sarah, saying that they couldn't leave him there like that, she just smiled, kissed him and told him to go get him. She kept the video window open on screen as she worked on other things, so she saw Chuck turn up, talk to Jeff and then put his arm around him and lead him to his car. As she waited for them to get back she thought back on what she remembered about Jeff, at first it had been a nightmare, he was sleazy Lester's creepy sidekick, always stoned and doing and saying disgusting things, but there was another side to him, too. She remembered watching a recording of him having a discussion with Big Mike and Lester about Chuck's women when he was with Hannah, and she remembered what Jeff said "don't you get it, none of them matter, Chuck may try to replace her, but when he's with Sarah, the light in his eyes shines brightly" and he'd made that beautiful video for their rehearsal dinner (she smiled briefly at the shock on his and Chuck's faces when Ellie kissed him for saving the day with that, but the smile faded when she remembered being taken down by the Norseman device just after that). Yes, there was a pretty good side to Jeff, even more so if he was still sober, the change that Devon had made by getting him to clean up his act was nothing short of amazing, functioning Jeff was brilliant. That thought made her pause, and decide to have a discussion with Chuck when they had a chance.

When they got back in, Chuck gave Jeff a tour of Carmichael Industries, the server room, computer labs etc, and then left him having nap on the lounge in one of the conference rooms while he went back to his office to work. Sarah came through the connecting door between their offices, propped herself on his desk and nodded to the conference room where Jeff was, asking how he was doing? Chuck shrugged, saying "Not good, when he got dumped by Lester, he came back to try and get back into Buy More, as it was all he knew, but now it's a hole in the ground." Sarah looked at him for a bit and then asked "What do you think about offering him a job here?" The best response Chuck could come out with was "What?", so she explained. "OK, I realise I don't have all my memories back, but he was the best the Nerd Herd had after you, he managed to work out that we were spies and put everything together himself, and he managed to reverse engineer the Omen Virus to tell you what it was meant to do, and what was being targeted, am I right about that?" Chuck nodded slowly, with an amazed expression on his face, so she went on. "Unless I'm mistaken, that means that he has the skillset we need in what we're trying to do with Carmichael Industries now, and we trust him, personally, don't we?" Another nod from Chuck as he looked up at his beautiful wife. "Well, I think that he could fit in here, and that would give him a chance to start again, just like us. Of course, I think we need to add the proviso that he stays clean, sober Jeff is smart and nice, but I wouldn't want Jeffster Jeff anywhere near us."

Chuck thought about what she'd said for a couple of minutes and agreed, asking whether they should talk it over with the others first? The response to that was that she didn't think Casey would have an issue, on the basis that they were discussing, as she looked up and caught Alex's eye, waving for her to come over. When Alex came in she explained what they were discussing and asked whether she'd be comfortable with Jeff being here, Alex's immediate response was not the Jeff she originally met, no, but yeah, the Jeff that came out after Devon got him to stop sleeping in his van and he got clean, that was someone she'd be comfortable with. They thanked her and as she was leaving she motioned to Sarah to come over when she had a chance.

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other, Chuck raised his eyebrow at her and she nodded, so he nodded as well and stood up, taking her hand to walk over to the conference room where Jeff was. They talked to Jeff for about an hour, admitting that he was right about what they were doing before, and explaining what they were moving into now, and how they thought he could fit into that. Jeff had many questions, of course, and they answered what they could (some things were still under national secret constraints). In the end it was agreed that Jeff would join the family, as it were, and Jeff had no trouble agreeing to the provisos and constraints that were required of him. Alex was passing the door as they were discussing that they could make room to put him up until he found a place, and popped her head in to offer an alternative which surprised everyone. She pointed out that with Casey away she felt a little vulnerable (understandable after being grabbed by Quinn's team and with all she knew about the people who had been coming after them), so she suggested that it would probably be better all round if Jeff stayed at the house with her until he found a place. Sarah looked her in the eye to get confirmation that she was really comfortable with this and she gave a subtle nod, so at that Sarah looked around for agreement from everyone and said, so that's that then.

While Chuck ordered lunch to be delivered for everyone, Sarah went to Alex's office to get the pregnancy test that she'd picked up for her and went off to the ladies'. About 15 minutes later she went into Chuck's office to tell him it looked like they were getting another addition to the family, when he looked at her with his adorable and oh so common confused look, she grinned and put the positive pregnancy test on his desk in front of him. The laughter and joyous shouting brought Alex and Jeff in to see what was going on, though Alex had a pretty good idea. It took some effort from Sarah to stop Chuck calling everyone with the news right away, and wait until they'd had it confirmed by the doctor. They compromised by sending Casey a message, explaining that Jeff had been hired and the reasoning behind it, and Alex sent him a message explaining why she arranged for Jeff to stay with her, at least until he came home. Everyone else could be be told about Jeff when they'd confirmed and told them the baby news.

When the food arrived, they took it into the conference room to set up, as he was getting the drinks out, Chuck turned to say something to Sarah but she stopped him with an upraised finger "Before you even think about doing a Devon on me Chuck, remember that I'm trained in over 200 ways to kill you. Now what did you want to say Sweetie?" Jeff just looked at them, confused, while Alex sprayed food over the table as Sarah had caught her with a mouthful. Chuck stood there for a sec, trying to speak, and then finally forced out "I was just going to ask you what you wanted, Sweetie", taking a big gulp of his wine. Sarah smiled and said "I'll have a sparkling water, thank you Sweetie." Alex was still spluttering over her food and had to leave the room for a few minutes to compose herself, coming back with paper towels to clean up the mess once she had done so.

Over lunch, they talked about some of the things they'd need to get Jeff set up, Chuck could create all the userids and accesses he needed today, but it'd take Alex a couple of days to get his employment paperwork sorted out, and even though Sarah could get the security clearances and checks that they'd need for the type of work that Jeff would be doing fast tracked, they would take the longest, so they needed to get started on that straight away. While he was thinking of it, Chuck tossed Jeff a set of car keys that looked rather familiar, when Jeff looked up he grinned, saying "Yep, the Nerd Herder, though it doesn't have the logo now."

After lunch, Chuck got Jeff set up in one of the spare offices with a computer and gear, and enough access to start looking around and getting an idea of where things were in the system. Once Jeff was settled he went back to his office, but rather than sitting down he went through to Sarah's office and bent over to put his arms around her from behind, kissing her on the top of the head and whispering "Thank you" in her ear. She turned in her seat to kiss him, asking "Are we really getting there Chuck? I don't want to hope too much, but it feels as though we are."


	4. Up To Speed

**Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head,**  
><strong>In your head,<strong>  
><strong>Zombie, zombie, zombie?<strong>

**As usual, no rights to any of the characters, blah, blah, blah.**

Sarah wondered what she'd gotten herself into, proposing to add Jeff to the CI family, well, not really, but she hadn't thought about the fact that most of the hard work would be on her. As far as his clearances went, his long, long list of misdemeanours and the fact that his mother was in the middle of a long prison sentence didn't help, but the fact that all of his deviant acts were overt, public and very well known did. Who said that Youtube was good for nothing? (The reasoning regarding things which could be used to compromise what you have access to is that overt acts are of less use for leverage or blackmail, it's the dirty little secrets that you're trying to hide that can be used against you.) Still, it made it a tough gig and took rather more effort. She also needed to give him a makeover to fit into the image that they were trying to present for Carmichael Industries, Buy More nerd or sleazy rock star chic didn't wash, so she took him to get his hair properly styled and an entire smart casual to formal wardrobe overhaul, he looked like a new man when he came back. The fact that Jeff felt/acted more professional and involved due to the makeover and the confidence they were showing in him resulted in a side benefit, it wasn't quite as amazing a transformation as Devon's getting him clean, but there was a notable step up in his approach to things and his output, apparently Jeff had even more potential in him than they'd realised.

As they'd known, there would be a delay before they could get Jeff working on any classified projects, but they could, and did, start him on commercial projects that didn't require clearances. This way, he could take some of the load off Chuck and free him up for the secret squirrel jobs that he was uniquely qualified for. One of the first projects that Jeff was put onto was analysing and back tracing the intel that Casey sent over from Europe, where he was winding up his engagement there. What they were looking for was to trace the shipments and dealings of the arms and drug smuggling operation that Casey was working on shutting down from the records that they'd grabbed.

Jeff had been making good progress through the next couple of weeks, and they'd been feeding information back to Casey a few times a day, whenever they had a large enough package to be of use to him. He was dredging up the routes, entry and exit points and storage locations for the various items that the target was shifting, and Casey's team was watching and/or raiding those locations to get further detail. There was just one thread through what he was analysing that was stumping him, the secrecy and obfuscation used on this was far more than anything else the organisation was involved with. He didn't want to bother Chuck, but he wasn't getting anywhere so to opened a video chat channel to ask him whether he had any pointers on what he could do to get past the blocks he was finding. What he wasn't expecting was the look of shock on Chuck's face when he mentioned the name associated with this thread, and the fact that Chuck literally sent his chair flying as he jumped up and ran across from his office. The second he arrived, he bodily pushed Jeff out of the way and was frantically hunting through the records on Jeff's computer, and that was what he was doing as Sarah arrived about 20 seconds later, anxious to know what could make her husband change into the desperate creature in front of her now.

In less than a minute, Chuck had gone through every reference and instance of Orion on Jeff's computer and stepped back, berating himself as he paced back and forth across the office. "No, no, no, how could I have been so stupid?" "If we'd thought of this then we could have recovered him!" This went on for 5-10 minutes and Jeff and Sarah (and Alex as she'd run over as well when the commotion started) stared at him, worried. Sarah finally got him to stop him pacing by standing in front of him with her hands on his shoulders as she looked him in the face, asking "Chuck, honey, what is it, what is this about?" He looked stricken and on the edge of falling apart and had trouble focussing on her as he repeatedly pointed to Jeff's computer, trying to form the words. "Orion, Orion is Stephen Bartowski, my father." Sarah looked into his eyes, gently asking "But I thought your father was dead?" Chuck nodded "Yes, Shaw killed him, but we never recovered his body from the Ring, and they've done this before." Now Sarah was getting really worried, she thought something had pushed Chuck over the edge. "Done what?" "Brought people back, they did it to Bryce and Shaw." Sarah had tears in her eyes as she tried to get through to him, convinced that he had lost his mind. She got him to settle down and lay down in the conference room and then called General Beckman, as she had no-one else to call.

When the General came on, she was shocked to see the woman she knew to have been one of the most lethal assassins on the planet totally distraught, and crying her eyes out, so she asked her what was going on. Sarah tried to catch her breath and explain that something had pushed Chuck right over the edge, because he thought his father had come back from the dead. At this the General's demeanour changed instantly and she leant forward, cutting through the tears with a harsh demand for details. Sarah choked out what Chuck had said, trying to understand what the General was asking. Once she'd finished, the General composed herself and then looked at her, saying "Chuck isn't necessarily wrong, Sarah, the Ring had the technology to revive people who had been killed, they brought Bryce Larkin back when they thought he had the Intersect, and also brought Daniel Shaw back after Chuck killed him to save you." At that, Sarah looked up at her in shock. "Chuck killed Shaw?" "Yes, Shaw was going to kill you, that was about the only thing that could push him to do that, he wouldn't do it to save himself, but for you he will." "What I'm saying, Sarah, is that believing that the Ring could have brought his father back after Shaw killing him doesn't make Chuck crazy, and as his father was the only one who could create the Intersect, they would have gone to any lengths to revive him. Can we talk to Chuck?"

Sarah went to get Chuck up and take him to her office to talk to the General, ignoring the looks and questions from Alex and Jeff. They were on-line to the General for about an hour, as she waved off anyone who tried to interrupt with appointments and important calls, winding up with her commitment to give any support necessary to track this matter down, in hope that the indications were right and his father had been revived. When they got off the call, Chuck looked much better, but was worried, as he knew that the government would try and drag his father back into making the intersect for them, given that Chuck had destroyed what they thought was the last copy of the Intersect in the DARPA labs. (Not knowing that he'd downloaded it into himself to diffuse the bomb at the concert to save the General and the thousands of other people at the concert.) They held each other for a while and then, back in a state to deal with things, he went back to Jeff's office to apologise for getting physical with him and acting so crazy, explaining that Orion used to refer to his father, who he thought was dead, so he sort of lost it. He asked Jeff to send him copies of everything relating to Orion and went back to his office to get to work. In the meantime Sarah went to Alex to give her a similar explanation, in order to relieve the tension and keep them out of something which was likely to get VERY dangerous.

They got Casey on a secure line to fill him in on the situation, between them they agreed that it wasn't time to let Ellie know, not wanting to give her any false hope until they knew what was going on, and that Mary could be filled in by the General if she chose to. Given that his mother was still in the CIA and had the same mindset, they weren't sure that she would place family interests over the agency's, while they would do whatever it took to get his father back and try to keep him free, they weren't so sure about his mother. Casey offered to come back straight away, but it was decided that it would be better if he stayed there, as the trails seemed to indicate that Orion had been shipped to Europe before what they had so far went cold, so if there was an extraction to be done, it would almost certainly be over there. When they broached the subject of bringing Alex into the matter (explaining the story they'd told her so far), they were surprised when he suggested that they should, as they'd expected that he'd want to keep his daughter away from anything as dangerous as this, given the type of people who would be after anyone involved. Sarah went to get her and she was brought up to speed with the story of Orion and the Ring's ability to revive people after they were killed. Alex was constantly looking from Chuck to her father's image, unable to accept what she was being told was real, but knowing that they wouldn't make up something like this, especially given how she'd seen this devastate Chuck when he discovered it.

Chuck was like a man possessed as he traced all the leads relating the Orion, Jeff had done a good job, but he didn't have the resources, skills or desperate focus that Chuck had. What he dug out was that it appeared that the Ring had apparently revived his father and then placed him in stasis to ship to their labs in Europe, possibly because they had more resources over there, but probably also to get him away from the arena where Chuck had more opportunity to track him down, given that Chuck was the only one who could find him before. The problem was that Team Bartowski took down the Ring just after that by capturing the Ring Elders and exposing their schemes to the intelligence community, so the recipients for the Orion shipment disappeared.

Given the mercenary nature of the the organisation that the Ring used to smuggle Orion into Europe, they decided to sell the package off to the highest bidder. They didn't really understand what the package was, but the name was circulating and creating a LOT of interest, so they put out feelers for interested buyers and brokered a deal. Chuck had to get into their systems and/or records to get the full information, but it was looking like Orion went to an Eastern Bloc country, possibly the Ukraine or Russia. For all the US tried to keep the Intersect quiet, people talked, and it was relatively common knowledge in the intelligence community that the Intersect existed and what the nature of the things that could be done with it were. Therefore, most of the organisations in the intelligence community were very interested in getting their hands on Orion, to try and have the intersect for themselves.

So, Chuck was now at the point where he really needed to head to Europe to get to the arms smuggling organisation that Casey was looking into, so that he could get access to the records to determine where his father went, but he had a quandary. There was no way Sarah would let him go into that situation without her there to protect him, and he wasn't about to let her get into that situation herself, especially now that she was pregnant. Working out how to get to the information to save his father and keep his wife safe at the same time, that was going to be the hardest part of this.


	5. Roman Holiday

**In case anyone was wondering, this was originally just meant to be a one shot that came out of a discussion I was having about all the shitty things that Morgan did and how couldn't other people see that? When that came out, some people were asking where it was going from there, so you can blame them I guess ;^)**

**NB: On the "No secrets, no lies" discussion, I guess it's hard to understand if you've never had to rely on what others tell you to put things together, but it's incredibly frustrating when you KNOW you're only getting half the story, so the image you can build is just a veneer, with no depth.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any of the characters, etc.**

When they got home from the Orion bombshell, Sarah took Chuck by the hand and led him to the couch, saying those dreaded words as they sat down "We need to talk". She looked at him to settle herself, and then started. "The General told me what happened with Shaw, and I need you to tell me the whole story, and also, why the phrase "No secrets, no lies" keeps popping up in my head."

Chuck looked at her, obviously considering what to tell her, then shrugged and began the explanation. "It was after you came over to let me know that Casey had told you the truth about my Red Test, and you said "Yes" to the second most important question I ever asked you. You had to sober me up and drag me in for a three man operation with Shaw against the Ring Director. The operation seemed to go well and you and Shaw went off to Paris to supposedly follow up leads about their Intersect project, but when I showed Morgan a video of a "fight" that Shaw had with Ring operatives, he pointed out that it was obviously staged, as none of the punches or kicks were connecting. I tried to convince the General what had happened but she wouldn't listen to me, and I couldn't contact you, so I grabbed everything I could find on Shaw and went to Paris with Casey to find you. The thing is, Shaw had convinced all of us that he didn't hold you responsible for killing his wife in your Red Test." At that Sarah looked at him, shocked. "Yeah, sorry, maybe I should have started further back, Evelyn Shaw, his wife, was the target for your Red Test, Shaw had been shown the video of you shooting her in your Red Test by the Ring, but he conned all of us" (the look on his face at that point was something that Sarah was going to go back to later, but she didn't want to interrupt him again) "into believing that he wasn't holding you responsible for it, he was holding the people who ordered it responsible, so it was agreed that you could still work as a team, so you went off to Paris together to track down their Intersect project." "Anyway, when it was obvious that what we were shown in the "Ring bust" operation was all an act, Casey and I headed off to Paris to find you and save you." "Shaw took you back to the location of your Red Test, and you were drugged when you realised where you were and what was going on. Casey went after the Ring Director and his team and I came to get you. Shaw and I fought, but he took me down and took you off to the bridge where he was going to throw you in the river. I grabbed a gun and came after you, just before he pushed you over, I tried to talk him down but he wasn't budging, so when he raised his gun to shoot me so he could get on with finishing you off, I shot him. As he went over the edge he grabbed you and tried to take you with him, but I managed to get to you and hang on so he couldn't pull you over." "After that, I took you back to your room and got you to bed, and sat with you until you woke up."

She sat there, looking at him in shock and trying to process the memories and feelings that came to the surface as he was describing what happened, the betrayal, the helplessness, the hope when Chuck arrived, waking up to see him in the morning, and the start of their life together that followed that. "You thought that you'd lose me because you killed him, even though that was the only way to save me." He nodded, tears in his eyes, and they held each other and cried for a while.

When they'd both regained their composure, she told him that he had to tell her everything, if she was to recover her memories, good and bad, because she knew that she'd done far more "Bad" than he ever could, even in the time they'd been together, so she understood that he was trying to hide what she'd done, more than what he'd done, but no more. Now, "No secrets, no lies"?

He explained that it started as "No lies" when he couldn't tell her the truth about his Red Test as it would have put Casey in front of a murder charge, so he'd asked her to let him keep that one secret, and he'd never lie to her. Then, when they were in Volkoff's Moscow headquarters and he had to come and rescue her and Casey, she asked him what he was doing there, he admitted that he'd been searching for his mother and was there to get leads on her. She was "annoyed" that he'd been keeping the search a secret from her while he'd been running all over the world and poking in the darkest, nastiest corners to get information on his mother, so she laid down the law, "New rule, no secrets, no lies." She nodded, as it came back to her, but said "Slight correction, I wasn't annoyed, I was furious that you'd been risking your life that way without letting me know, and protect you."

With that they kissed and made up (though there wasn't anything to make up for, really), and went to bed.

In the office the next day, Chuck started to put things together for his plan to get to Europe to track down his father. He organised to get a request to come to Rome for a few days for the meetings to set up a new engagement with an Italian organisation, once there he could hop over to Dresden where Casey was to get into the arms smuggler's systems and trace his father's movements.

The request came in and he told the team that he was just heading over to Rome to get things organised with a new customer, but foundered when Sarah said that that was wonderful, a few days together in Rome would be just the break they needed. When he was trying to think of a response to that she grabbed him by the arm and marched him into her office, closing the door and turning to look at him.

"Here's another trip down memory lane. "I am a trained spy who can tell when someone is keeping a secret, especially when that someone happens to be my husband", do you remember that one, and the fact that you agreed NOT to keep secrets from me?" "Did you really think that I wouldn't know that you're going over there so you can get closer to the information about your father?" Chuck tried to come up with a convincing argument for a couple of minutes and then gave up. "OK, yes, I was going to go to Rome, have the meeting with the customer, then get to Dresden to get the information on my father, just a quick in and out. There won't be guns, or fighting, I'll just grab the information and get out."

He knew from the look Sarah was giving him that he was about to get it, so he just blurted out "I just got you back Sarah, I can't risk anything taking you away again, and there's the baby now as well."

She blew. "What about me, you're breaking your word AND trying to sneak off to break into an international arms dealer WITHOUT ME, if I lost you, I'd not only be without the person I live for, I wouldn't even have the memories of our life together, what could I tell our child about their father when I haven't had a chance to get our memories back yet? and what part of their being arms smugglers makes you think that there won't be plenty of guns and people ready and eager to use them?" At that she broke down, crying, and he felt like the shit that he'd been as he held her.

When she'd recovered, they sat down and agreed that they'd do the meetings in Rome and go to Dresden to try and get the information he needed on his father TOGETHER, if there was time they'd go back to Rome for a bit of a break, as Sarah had said many times, while she'd been to the "romantic" cities many times, she'd never had the time or company to let her enjoy them, so she deserved a chance to do so.

When they came out, Alex was sending looks Jeff's way, and they realised that what they'd been arguing about was quite audible to both Alex and Jeff, so they needed to talk about it. They all sat down in the conference room and they gave them a slightly sanitised version of what was happening and what they were going to do. Alex, of course, had more of the real story, but it was better to tell both of them as if there was only one version. Obviously, there was no mention of the fact that his father had died and been revived, then shipped across the world in stasis, or the Intersect, the spin on that was that he had some very important information and he'd been kidnapped and transported to Europe for the people who wanted it, so they were heading over there to find out where he'd been sent and organise to get him back. They just went with the standard story that Sarah had been involved in an accident and had received some head injuries to explain the memory issue.

Unfortunately, Jeff wasn't as gullible as he'd been before he cleaned his act up, and therefore he was asking quite a few very pertinent questions. Questions about the arms smugglers and how they could be considering breaking in there could be answered relatively truthfully (the smugglers were transporting him and knew where he'd gone to, and they had connections with organisations who could provide the team to get in there (Alex broke in with a laugh and said "Yeah, Dad's girlfriend's company", which got another look.). Others were more problematical, eventually they had to fall back on the "Classified information that we're not allowed to talk about" defence on the tricky ones.

At the end, Jeff looked relatively satisfied with the answers he got. He was rather surprised when Chuck came around the table to thank him and hug him, pointing out they wouldn't have found the references to his father if Jeff hadn't dug them out. With Chuck's other workloads, they probably wouldn't have taken the job if Jeff wasn't there to work on it, so the whole thing could have just slipped past them. Therefore, a large part of the fact that they now had a chance to recover his father was thanks to Jeff.

So, the next day they were in Rome, standing on the balcony of their hotel suite and looking out over the city. Chuck was standing behind Sarah with his arms around her and he apologised. "I'm sorry, it was the only way I could think of to find my dad and keep you safe, you've already risked so much for my family, going into Volkoff to take him down and bring my mother out..." At that she twisted around to look up at him, but he just kissed her on the forehead and said "Another time?", to which she nodded as he went on. "You haven't just risked yourself again and again for me, you've put yourself in harm's way to protect the other people I care about, you've done enough of that. I just wanted to keep you safe while I did this myself, which was still sort of selfish as by protecting you I'm protecting myself, because I have nothing to live for if I don't have you." She leaned back into him as she replied. "Do you think it's any different for me?" She stopped briefly as she remembered what she said to him when she finally got to him in Thailand "Chuck, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I don't care if you have the Intersect or not, without you I'm nobody, I'm nothing but a spy. Nothing has changed from when I said that to you, other than my need for you getting deeper, you are my life, so no, I'm never going to let you go into danger without me, we're all or nothing, we go in together, we come back together."


	6. Where For Art Thou Father

**And the beat goes on.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to the characters etc.**

Chuck and Sarah met with the new client and agreed the nature and stipend for the services that they wanted, though the new client was not at all happy that Chuck always ensured that he was between the client and Sarah, as his eyes and hands were out to roam. The up(?) side was that the fees that they'd signed off on were also rather higher than their going in point, as Chuck had been pushing them up as the guy ogled Sarah, trying to to get him to reject them so they could walk away.

With the "legitimate" portion of the trip out of the way, they were back on the jet to Dresden to meet up with Casey. Casey had to admit to being pleasantly surprised by the quality and pace of Jeff's work, the information packets that he was feeding across at least once or twice a day were giving Casey's team what they needed to collect deeper intel on the target. With that and their "family" discussions out of the way, they turned to the primary purpose for the trip, Orion.

Casey's team had identified potential entry points to get into the records facility and Casey had them geared up for a covert incursion. Chuck would handle the security systems and go through the computer systems for any electronic records, Sarah would head up the team searching for physical records, and Casey would oversee the security for the operation. They had at most a 2 1/2 to 3 hour window to get through what they could, and then they had to be out. Of course, with a time window that tight, there was no way for the team to do a comprehensive search of the entire physical filing system, but Sarah's team did manage to skim through the entire system in an attempt to pick up any flags. The operation went to plan and they got out without leaving any evidence that anyone below their level of capability would be able to recognise. The only casualties were a few team members who were making comments about Sarah in front of the wrong people, oh, and one who made comments about Chuck, the rest of the team became rather more polite after that.

From the on-site analysis, it looked like Russia was confirmed as the final destination for Orion, but a thorough analysis of all electronic and non-electronic records was needed before they moved. The thing that worried Chuck was the fact that there was no evidence on the net that his father was out there. His father had usually managed to get a signal of some sort to him, but this time there was nothing, which was part of the reason that he'd believed that his father was gone this time. If he WAS out there, it appeared that he was in a locked down site and where he was being held had no access to the outside world. (That would make sense, actually, whoever got their hands on him should be aware of his ability to, basically, work magic on computer systems and the like, and that the US and other countries would probably stop at nothing to acquire him, so if they were cautious (and that is the nature of the spy game), they could have created an environment that had no direct access to the outside world, computers, phones, security systems, anything that could be used to communicate. It was possible to put "air gaps" in all the systems if they were serious about containing him.)

They told Casey that they'd run through everything and contact him as soon as they had solid intel, they knew that he wanted to get home and wanted him home as well, so if there were no solid leads in sight they'd pull the plug, hard as that was to do. Chuck had put the people he cared about and who were there for him in harm's way before while chasing his family, he wasn't about to start that again. Casey wasn't Sarah (as he'd been fond of telling her in his heckling days when he was trying to bait her, or get the point through to Chuck), but he was closer to actual family than anyone but Ellie or Sarah, and would never betray them (as opposed to others), Chuck and Sarah had a commitment and duty to be there and look out for him, the way he did for them.

They did go back for another day in Rome before heading home. Chuck was anxious to find the answers, but the time for them was more important. They spent they day wandering around the older areas of the city, chatting to the people there, and immersing themselves in the culture. They avoided the tourist areas for the most part, preferring to fore-go the noisy crowds, that night they ordered room service, rather than go to a restaurant, and had it out on the balcony of their suite so they could look out over the city again. It was the closest thing to a romantic holiday they'd ever managed to have, other than that train trip from Paris to Zurich, and they hardly left their compartment that time.

As soon as they got home, Chuck and Sarah set aside all other work as they went through all the paper and electronic records and confirmed that the delivery trail finished in Russia. Once that was locked in, Chuck scanned utility records across the region where it finished to identify any high usage locations that did not match any standard usage patterns, simultaneously accessing their satellite and any others that he could hack access to (nearly all) to scan the region with infra red and high resolution imaging to build a comprehensive map of the area. Once all the applicable mapping had been done, he overlayed all the maps on each other to identify any stand out sites. What he was dreading was that the installation was not in the designated area at all, in which case they would have to widen the search, with an obviously lower probability of success.

For all of Chuck's fears, they had a few possible sites in the target region, and one in particular hit nearly all the parameters/markers that he had programmed into the search engines. Heat signature, power usage, limited communications of any kind, large numbers of scientific/technical personnel, large/active military/guard force on show etc. Once they had a strong contender for the site, he went searching for any available records of imagery for that area in the period around where his father should have been been moved there, running image recognition software over any available imagery, and sitting down to personally review every scrap that he could find. The fact that he was prepared to pull the plug if he couldn't find strong evidence of his father's presence didn't stop him being desperate to find that evidence, and image recognition had known limitations. Whereas the software required fixed parameters, human filters could get a hit on known mannerisms or the way a person stands to identify them. They also ran voice recognition scans over every scrap of audio that was available for that area in the period around where he should have been moved there.

To complicate things, given that there was no guarantee that the primary site being investigated was correct, he also pulled every scrap of A/V material around any other potential locations, and was running the same scans over them as well. It was taking up nearly 100% of the processing power of all their systems to run all the scans.

The searches took couple of days of solid work, every possible hit was stored for deeper investigation. Chuck became the "skin covered robot" that Casey used to call him sometimes, his only interaction with anyone was when Sarah brought him food and drink, or just stayed with him for a while, she was the only thing that could take his attention off the screens. At time's he'd just turn around and wrap himself around her, reminding himself of what was actually important. (When Alex saw them like that, she'd tear up, as that was what she'd been hoping for, with the wrong man. What they had was what most girls dreamed of, but never managed to find.) After the first pass, Chuck and Sarah sat down for in-depth review of everything that was flagged as a possible match, no matter how tenuous, once again, storing anything that appeared to rate further consideration. This took another day of solid work for both of them. At the end of it, they had 7 instances that they thought could be reasonably strong chances, and they say down together to discuss them before calling Casey.

When they had Casey on a secure line, they went through the audio clip that had a tentative voice match for Orion, and 6 images that had a figure of suitable size and characteristics standing or behaving in a manner that was consistent with Chuck's father, all around the same time at the same location. What Chuck had told Sarah was that he'd go along with Casey's assessment, whatever it was, if he didn't believe that evidence was strong enough to risk an incursion with his team, they'd pull the plug. While he was prepared to stand by that, he was relieved when Casey was prepared to move on the evidence, and smiled at Sarah when she squeezed his leg under the desk. Once they agreed that it was a go, they sat down to begin planning.

They decided that the best entry strategy was a parachute drop, with a plane on standby for the extraction. The team had to be big enough to handle the small army that was on-site, and keep it occupied for long enough for them to locate and extract Orion. Chuck and Sarah would lead the extraction team (he wasn't even going to try and talk her out of it, he accepted her argument and was a little ashamed with himself that he hadn't accepted that her commitment was just as strong as his before they argued about it), and Casey would oversee the entire operation. Another thing they needed to do was to destroy all records and equipment relating to the Intersect to prevent it being re-created before they left the facility. Chuck did IR scanning of the facility and identified where the intersect computers appeared to be, so they were working on the assumption that his father's labs, and therefore his father, should be somewhere nearby, that gave them a target area for the extraction team. They would have all been happier to be working together, directly, but they had to accept that, with the size of the operation, Casey needed to step back enough to manage all the elements if they were to have any chance of success. They also needed a viable plan to get to where the extraction plane could land, helicopters was the obvious choice, but the team would be too big for that to be the only approach, so they settled for the extraction team and a strike squad being airlifted to the airstrip to hold it until Casey and the rest of the team could get there via surface transport.

They weren't happy with the plan, while it was viable, there were way too many variables that could go wrong, the biggest worry for Chuck and Sarah was that Casey was getting to the extraction point on the slow boat, and therefore would be at risk for an extended period. Casey and Sarah were a little shocked when Chuck mused that maybe they should call off the whole thing, the people at risk (waving at them) meant more than the target, and god knows how many people would die in the course of pulling off this operation. Sarah said "But he's your father." and he replied "And you're my wife, and are carrying our child, and Casey has done more to support us and keep us safe than he ever did." Casey broke in at that point to ask about the pregnancy, and they realised that they hadn't told him yet, as the Orion matter came up before Sarah had a chance to get to the doctor to get confirmation (and still hadn't), so she explained what they'd decided about not telling anyone outside of the office that day until it was confirmed, and added that it did not effect the matter that was currently under discussion in her distinctly Sarah manner. Of course, Casey was one of the few people on the planet who Sarah couldn't intimidate (that much), and he started arguing about the risk, so Sarah took control of the decision process herself. She got input from both of them on amendments to the plan that would reduce the level of risk in the areas that they were concerned about, and pulled lead times and requirements from them to put the necessary elements together. With that she made the determination that the risk was acceptable and the timeframe and elements were doable, and made the go call for the operation, looking at both of them and challenging them to defy her. Casey capitulated with a grunt, Chuck with a kiss, and the operation was on.


	7. Jailbreak

**Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak**  
><strong>Somewhere in this town<strong>

**Chuck has seen too much, he's not the wide eyed boy he used to be.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any of the characters.**

While Casey organised the support team for the operation, Chuck and Sarah ran Carmichael Industries, and Chuck kept an eye on anything happening around the installation that they hoped his father was in. They knew that General Beckman and the powers that be would be unhappy and suspicious when everything was destroyed in the operation. They laid down a solid cover story that the place was mined to be taken out in the event of it being breached, and Orion was trapped in the building and wiped out along with everything else, but they had no expectation that everyone would believe the story, especially when one of the people they were hoping to convince had worked with them long enough to know them and their motivations.

Back at CI, Chuck was running his investigations with Jeff handling the non-classified and less sensitive elements (for now at least), Sarah was reviewing the security structure of their clients to identify and provide advice on weak points and Alex was trying to get up to speed in the various areas. With the exception of the aspect of the operation to retrieve Chuck's father, the situation in CI was the most frustrating for Alex, she was intelligent and driven, and had formal training in most of the key areas (she'd actually completed more of the standard pre-requisites to become an agent than her father, Sarah or Chuck had, but she had no real world experience to make it workable as yet, and her father, Chuck and Sarah were all worried about her moving into their world as they knew how dangerous it was).

Thinking about Alex and the dangers she would face if she went into that side of the business, Chuck uncharacteristically swatted a pen set off his desk, to be sent crashing into the wall. Sarah jumped up to run into his office and see what happened, only to be met with an anger that she'd seen very rarely on Chuck's face in the years they'd been together almost constantly. He looked up at her and that expression changed to consternation immediately as he got out of his chair to come to her and apologise. When she asked what was wrong the words came from him in a flood as he explained that he was thinking of Alex and the dangerous business she was getting into, which led to thinking about the fact that they'd agreed that they wanted to change the business to get OUT of that sort of thing, and now less than 2 months into the new business, he'd dragged them back into it to try and rescue his father, IF he was where they thought he was. Then he repeated what he'd said when they were going over it with Casey, that he thought that the whole thing may be a mistake, as it was putting everything that REALLY mattered at risk for someone who'd walked away nearly every time he was needed.

Sarah wasn't sure what to say at first, she could feel how this was tearing him apart while he held her. She could understand that he felt a duty to his father, but that he categorically opposed any plan that would put her, the baby, and Casey (in that order, basically) at risk to try and save him, which was why he tried to sneak off to organise something himself before she stopped him. She sat him down to talk to him about it, re-iterating her point up front that there was NO way that she would let him try and do this himself, and that if she had to go in after him alone she would, which would put her at greater risk (knowing that that brain of his had already analysed all the variables and probable actions and that he knew, logically, that that would happen if he tried it, but looking into his eyes as she told him, herself, she made sure that he knew that on every level). She then pointed out that they had to do it, as the guilt he'd feel if he didn't would fester away at him and that would taint their life together. He did suggest an alternative, that they just hand over the intel to General Beckman and let her send strike teams in to get his father and the Intersect, it should be enough to save his father and keep her, and them, out of harm's way, but as he said it he knew that it couldn't be done that way.

The Intersect was the current equivalent of nukes when they were first available, something that was so powerful that it could be used as a deterrent for defence, or a weapon of destruction, the axiom of the ancient Greeks came to mind, that the only ones who could be trusted to wield real power were those who didn't WANT to wield power. He did enjoy the cool things he could do with the intersect, but he was very cautious about using the information in there more than absolutely necessary, whereas the people selected by governments would not have any compunctions against using that power for their masters' ends, or their own, and there were 1001 things in the Intersect which could bring down governments all over the planet, including their own. The fact that as yet, no-one but him had been found who could host and utilise the Intersect without going into brain melt-down was a definite home court advantage, but they couldn't rely on it staying that way, they had to accept that sooner or later the governments would manage to identify and acquire their own people who could use the Intersect reliably. That was why they couldn't afford to let any government or other organisation get their hands on the Intersect research, or his father, so they were back to the point where THEY had to mount the operation to recover him and destroy all the information etc about the Intersect, then help him disappear forever. At that he stood to go over to the cupboard to pour himself a rather large drink.

A couple of days later they got the word from Casey that the operation was ready to go, so they left Alex and Jeff to hold the fort and headed to the staging point, just outside Russia. There were quite a few looks when Sarah turned up at the camp, but the ones who'd been in the previous team quickly circulated what happened to anyone who stepped over the line in regard to her, and what she did to anyone making cracks about her husband, so nearly all of that dried up very quickly. They went over the plan and activities again and then geared up for the drops, boarded the planes and took off.

Casey was going in with the strike team first, if at all possible they'd take the external guards out and gain entry to the installation quietly, to avoid putting the entire base on alert, and reduce the death toll on both sides, as once they were alerted, it would be an all out war. By the time Chuck, Sarah and the extraction/scuttling team landed, the strike team had cracked the facility without setting off any alarms, so they went straight in and began threading their way through the corridors/tunnels to where they thought his father was, taking out anyone they came up against as silently as possible and hiding the evidence as they went. In addition to holding the entry point and setting up a protective corridor behind the extraction team to ensure an open/safe way out, the strike team were also setting scuttling charges throughout the installation on key structural points, to help bring the whole thing down. The plan was, the scuttling charges in the Intersect area would wipe out all the records and equipment (and personnel, but they were trying to avoid thinking about that, the only thing they had to hang onto in that regard was that very few, if any, of them were innocents), and then the structural charges would bring everything else down on top of the remnants and bury it, also burying the evidence of Orion that was supposedly in there.

The extraction team got to the Intersect area, sweeping that part of the facility and setting scuttling charges as they went. It didn't take very long to locate the lab where his father was working, even though it was one of the last areas they looked into, due to the fact that their method of cutting his father off from the outside world meant that they had to have all the equipment, and him, in one area.

When they located him, Chuck was nothing but business, motioning to the team to set the charges as he walked straight up to his father. When his father started to talk, "Charles, what are you doing here?", he just said "Getting you out of here." as he grabbed his shoulder and started pushing him to the door. His father was baulking and trying to talk, so he just said "There's no time, shut up and do exactly what you're told, I need to get Sa.. us out of here.", but his father just dug his heals in and started to say "But Charles...". What happened next was a shock for Sarah, Chuck drew his dart gun and put 2 darts into his fathers' carotid artery in under a second, and before he'd hit the floor, he pointed to two of the team with the dart gun, saying "Take him out of here, if he doesn't get out, neither will you." in a tone that brooked no argument, and left no doubt as to his intentions. Looking into Chuck's eyes, Sarah truly saw for the first time what the last couple of (few?) years had taken out of him, and she started thinking about that as he waved her out after the men carrying his father and he rounded up the rest of the team to get out.

The exit from the facility was uneventful, Casey called in the helicopters when they indicated they were coming out, so they landed just after they got outside. As they were taking off, they heard the first of the charges go off, and the series was so close coupled that the last had gone off and the buildings were starting to settle by the time they'd got up to altitude, they saw Casey and the rest of the team load up and leave on the ground transports before they'd left the area. Sarah watched Chuck on the way to the airstrip and he remained in operational mode, closed down, for the entire time. When they landed, Chuck organised the sentries and defensive ring around the planes, and the loading of the planes with a brutal efficiency, the only break from that was when he held her for a few seconds and begged her to get on the plane to watch over his father, after that he stood and watched the road that Casey and the rest of the team would be coming in on. As the trucks came roaring in, he directed the men onto the planes, calling in the defensive ring and sentries as the last truck arrived, he and Casey jumped onto plane carrying Sarah and his father as it started rolling on its takeoff run. The planes were well on their way before any of the vehicles chasing them arrived, and they'd scuttled their helicopters and trucks to prevent them being used, and destroy the runway.

On the plane, Chuck remained closed off, when she went to him, he kissed her and desperately begged her to give him a bit of time to settle down, so she kissed him again, looked into his eyes as she told him that she loved him, and then did so, snagging Casey and all but forcibly dragging him into the soundproofed command room. As they sat down, she jumped into it, explaining what she'd seen when they extracted his father, and asking what happened to do that to him, Casey looked at her for a minute or so and then said "OK", before laying out the traumas that had been heaped on Chuck since they (she and him) got together. He touched on Shaw trying to kill her and Chuck having to kill Shaw to save her, but she waved him off to say that she knew that, he went on, "Then they had the meltdown that was coming from the early version of the Intersect, he handled it better than she and Grimes had, but it got him committed to a CIA asylum and left him a bit fried for a while." "The next hit was Shaw coming back from the dead, with the intersect, getting us (pointing to her and himself) arrested, killing his father as he stood next to him to compromise his ability to use the intersect, and took Chuck and them off so he could "kill them while they were escaping"." He briefly related how Ellie had followed them and how Grimes and Devon had used his car to blow up the transport they were in to get them out and then went on to describe how they (mainly Chuck) had exposed the Ring and taken it down, and beaten Shaw in a fight to get him arrested and thrown into a CIA black site (with the Intersect intact, unbeknownst to them), and Chuck got out of the CIA to honour the promise he'd made to Ellie.

"After that, Chuck got a message that his father arranged to be sent in the event of his death, and went back to their old house to find a private records repository of massive proportions underneath the house. He found that his mother was apparently still alive and decided to go hunting her, with Grimes, without us (again pointing) knowing about it, as Ellie was pregnant and he thought she needed their mother, with their father dead. We crossed paths in Volkoff's headquarters in Moscow when we (pointing) were captured, he rescued us and then told you about the search, but he had to trigger the EMP and wiped out the files that he was there to get to save you (us). Of course, being Chuck, whenever you had a tiff he'd be convinced that you were going to leave him and he'd fall apart, I guess that was trauma too."

At that point he stopped to look at her. "You haven't forgotten that you are the whole world to him, and that he would, and has, turned over everything in the world to get to you and save you?" She shook her head "Or that you've done similar things to save him when he was taken?" She shook her head again, wondering where he was going.

"Anyway, his mother contacted him and came to the US, supposedly to sell a chemical weapon that induced terror to the CIA to get it off the market, she shot him in the chest.." She looked at him, shocked, he nodded and went on "He was wearing a vest, then she left him with the scientist and the terror weapon, you guys found that the crazy scientist had built up an immunity to the drug and he set it off in Castle, Chuck implemented quarantine to protect you but he got the full brunt of it, he finally managed to take him down and you got the antidote to him before he went crazy, but it hit him pretty hard. THEN, he set up a meeting between his mother and Ellie, and all the evidence we had was pointing to his mother being rogue, so you and I arrested her, because he'd already told you that his mother was his blind spot, and his judgement was impaired when it came to her. That was obviously a trauma for him"

"So, he went to her when she was in the holding cell and she fed him a line that Volkoff was her MI6 handler who could clear her. He went and met with Volkoff under the assumed name he was using, got taken and then they "escaped" to get back to LA to get the "proof" that his mother wasn't rogue, meanwhile his mother conned us (pointing) into believing that she could take us to the point where we could get Chuck back. Anyway, to shorten the story, there was a bit of a fight at the bank and then you guys took his mother and the "proof" back to his father's bunker to read it, only to find it was blank, his mother used a suppression device on him and Volkoff turned up, they tied you guys up, set explosives all over the place and left you to be blown up, but she slipped you a razor blade and you got yourself and Chuck out, without the Intersect, so he was ripped apart by that, and the fact that she'd helped Volkoff try to kill you both."

"After that, the CIA hit Chuck with all sorts of crackpot scientists trying anything to remove the block on the Intersect, ending with one idiot who decided that the secret was "Pure Fear of Death", he convinced Beckman and the CIA to let him do whatever he felt necessary to unblock him, that was bad enough, but he got Chuck taken by The Belgian. The CIA couldn't or wouldn't do anything You went crazy, back to the woman you were before Chuck, you locked me in a cell and stuck a needle full of ammonia in one of The Belgian's lieutenants' neck to get him to give up where they were." She looked at him wide eyed, and he nodded "You left me in the cell and headed off to Thailand to find him, fighting you way across the country and terrorising all the mercenaries and warlords there. We found you just as you got the actual location of the Belgian's hideout and helped you get in there. The entire time we were doing this they were trying to rip the Intersect secrets out of his head, using more and more intrusive methods, when we got there they'd almost wiped his mind to release the blocks on the Intersect, but you got through to him and brought him back."

"Then his mother came back, we took her and Volkoff came in to get her back, he threatened me, you, and Chuck, and forced you to take him to a dinner at Ellie's, so everyone in his life was threatened. The only upside was that you got his father's computer back off Devon after Ellie had worked out some of the problems on it, and it unblocked Chuck's Intersect."

"Next up was partly on you, you told Beckman that you'd do anything necessary to get his mother back, so she set you up as a traitor so you could get into Volkoff as a rogue and work with his mother to help her finish her mission and bring her out. He was OK at first, but the further you went into the role, the more he thought he'd lost you, especially after he thought you'd tried to kill me in front of him." She was actually open mouthed at that one "Volkoff set a test for you, to kill me to prove your loyalty, while we were fighting I told you to throw me out the window, so I'd land on a window cleaning scaffold about 40' down, it worked up to that point, but a shackle broke and I fell the rest of the way to the ground and was out for days, so I couldn't tell him what really happened, he wasn't doing at all well at that point. Anyway, things fell apart and he ran a side operation to take down Volkoff and get you guys home in time for Clara's birth, and you got engaged at the hospital."

Of course, Chuck being Chuck there were all the dramas leading up to the wedding, and then Vivian Volkoff took you down with the Norseman device at your rehearsal dinner, do you remember the Norseman device?" She nodded and he went on. "His world was ending as he held your hand at the hospital, Ellie and Devon managed to slow the spread by putting you in an ice bath to try and give him time to find the antidote. The only way to get the antidote was from Volkoff, and there was no way of getting to him in time through official channels, so he decided to break into the Supermax, I went with him. Problem was, when we got there, Volkoff was gone and we were trapped by Decker and locked out of all CIA resources. We got back into Castle with Beckman's ID so Chuck could steal the Nighthawk (a 250 MPH weaponised bike) to chase down Volkoff's transport and get Volkoff to give him the antidote. Problem was that Decker used a suppression device to wipe out the Volkoff persona before Chuck got there, so all there was was Hartley Winterbottom. Chuck brought him back and he made the antidote for the original Norseman device, but it didn't work with the later Norseman."

"Chuck was going break into Volkoff to steal the antidote for you, but Decker caught him as he was leaving the hospital, removed the Intersect and imprisoned him. I managed to get free and released him and his mother, then his mother and I held Castle to give him and Hartley time to escape. They got to Volkoff, but Hartley bailed, so Chuck surrendered to Vivian and begged her to take him, but send you the antidote. She was sure it was a trick and was going to kill him until her father turned up. She still wasn't prepared to agree until Chuck gave her and Hartley the untraceable Ids that we'd given him for the two of you, so that they could disappear. Anyway, she ended up giving him the antidote and a plane full of special forces troops to ensure that he could get through to you. Chuck parachuted in, diverted Decker's attention until the troops were on the ground and told him that he had all the information on Agent X (the project to create Volkoff) and his involvement and that it would go to all the news channels if they didn't let him through. He got to you just in time and you were married."

"The next drama was after you two created Carmichael Industries with the $877 million that you got from Hartley and Vivian as a wedding present, Decker slipped a set of corrupted Intersect glasses into the box of things for Chuck, but Grimes put them on and downloaded the Intersect. His inner douche wasn't hidden any more, and he screwed everything up, ruined all our jobs, smashed a $6 million Ming Vase, and told everyone he was the Intersect, then he sold out to Gertrude's company and stole the big contract that Beckman gave us. He almost put us out of business and wiped us out. Chuck, and you, thought that his behaviour was due to the bad Intersect, but that was a lie, because you had the same Intersect and you didn't even turn back into the pre Chuck Enforcer Sarah that had come out a number of times."

"Because of him telling everyone that he was the Intersect, Decker managed to get the CIA to put a contract out on him, we tried to get it cleaned up but he'd made sure that one contract was sent out to the Viper, an assassin who couldn't be recalled, so Chuck went out as bait for the Viper, with you. As a result both of you almost got killed before you managed to stop her. Once that was all shut down, I went to clean up the mess and make sure they didn't come after us again, but Decker had cameras set up and managed to get me arrested for murder."

"Decker was still running his master's games, and tranqued you and Chuck to bring you in to make a deal, you get the Omen virus and give it to him and he clears me of all charges. So Chuck hacked into the systems to get the ID of the creator and then you guys tracked him down and went after him, with Gertrude's support, though she kept her clothes on" At the look she gave him, he said with a smirk that they had to go into a pseudo cult compound and she and Chuck had to go in naked, then went on. "You got the guy and half the virus, then Chuck had to go into the Collective, a hacker consortium, to get the other half, well he went in as a prospective hacker to get into the systems and you and Gertrude grabbed the device when he took down their systems. When you tried to deliver the Omen virus to Decker and get me cleared, though, he told you that the whole point of the handoff was to get footage of you with the virus to frame you for releasing it, putting Chuck on top of the most wanted list, and that I'd die in prison. Gertrude stole the virus back and planted a bomb on Decker, then blew him up, so she had to run. She broke me out before she left, with some help."

"Beckman warned us that they were coming after us, so we went on the run, but they grabbed Ellie and Devon and made Chuck trade the Omen virus for them, and then they released it. That's when we found who was behind it. It turned out that Shaw had dirt on Decker via the Intersect and he used that to blackmail him, and one of the functions of the virus was to unlock Shaw's cell so he got out. He got into Castle and captured you, using you as bait to force Chuck to get the rest of what he wanted before he killed both of you. Shaw also dropped the temperature in Castle to let the devices work, so you were freezing to death. Chuck got the Macau device that he needed to compress the data being collected via the Omen Virus. He got Jeff and Lester (mainly Jeff) to reverse engineer the Omen virus to work out what it was doing, which let him put Shaw's plan together. He loaded the Omen virus onto the Macau device so that it would corrupt the intersect when Shaw tried to load the information collected by the virus. Then he sent the device down and drew Shaw up to the Buy More to fight him, and sent Grimes in to release you, I was down there too, but he'd captured me when I tried to get in, between us we managed to release you, and Chuck and Ellie took Shaw down."

"The next one was on you again, Shaw baited you about the baby that you'd saved and left with your mother before you came to Burbank, so you were going to go back to Hungary by yourself to clean up the mess and keep them safe. Chuck finally got you to accept our help, luckily, because you almost got yourself killed a few times in the operation (and you know what that does to Chuck). Anyway, we took down all the bad guys, your mother and Molly were safe and you got to re-connect with them."

"Then we had the final drama, Grimes again, Quinn had come after him because he was telling everyone he was the Intersect, so he captured him using Bo Derek" At the look she gave him, he snorted. "Yeah, she was a second rate spy as well as a second rate actress, anyway, with Quinn's massive ego he told Grimes the plan and showed him the Intersect glasses, but Grimes managed to grab the glasses and escape. We tracked them down and recovered them, but Quinn grabbed Chuck and told you to bring them to trade for Chuck. We went to the swap point but it was a trap, neither of us could get out so you put them on and took out the squad sent there to take us down, then got us shipped to Japan to save Chuck. Quinn used Alex to blackmail me into giving you guys up, sorry, and in the end he tranqued you and disconnected the baggage car to get away. He then used the flash cards to wipe out memories of your life with Chuck, with us, and pretended to be your handler to send you after Chuck, but I don't need to tell you about that."

"So those were the prime traumas Chuck has had in the last few years, the ones that hit him hardest were the ones that involved losing you, saving the world, disarming nuclear bombs and everything else he could take in his stride. The thing was, he thought he needed the Intersect to do great things, but he didn't, it wasn't the Intersect that he used to track you down and save you in Paris, it was him, when we were dealing with that suitcase nuke, the Gretas had the same Intersect he did, but they couldn't work out how to disarm it, he could. He didn't have the Intersect at all when he went into Volkoff to beg for your life, he just walked into a snake's den with a need to save you. I watched you two stop a nuclear strike against the US by giving relationship advice to a stinking commie dictator and his crazy wife, he never needed the computer in his head to be great, but he does need you."

Casey had been talking for well over an hour, and he was mainly talking about the big items in recent years. Sarah had been remembering the events as Casey was talking about them, but without the depth of emotion that came when Chuck told her what had happened. Perhaps that was a good thing, she had been crying since about 10-15 minutes into it, how could he handle all this, and why hadn't he shared this load with her? Scrub that, she knew why, to protect her, the only thing that had taken away from the tears was Casey's heartfelt plea for her not to tell Chuck about "those" things he'd been saying.

Sarah thanked Casey with a hug and they headed back out of the command room, to see that Chuck's father had come out of the tranq, when he saw them, he pointed at them and told Chuck that he couldn't trust them, at which Chuck punched him out, leaning over him to talk slowly and clearly in his face. "My WIFE is the reason that we came for you, I was going to give up on you but she wouldn't let me, and my friend, my partner, ran this operation so we could get you out. These people are the reason that you're here and I've trusted them with my life for over 5 years, whereas YOU left whenever I needed you." Chuck stood up and asked Casey to fill his father in on what they had planned to help him disappear and started to walk off to the command room, wanting to be as far away from his father as he could on the plane, stopping to look back when Sarah called his name, and reach out his hand to her. Sarah ran to him and they went into the command room together.


	8. Family

**What do you do with a mad scientist? Drunken sailors are bad enough.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters etc**

Once they were in the command room with the door shut, Chuck slumped into a chair with his head down, Sarah went to him and put her hand under his chin to lift his face to look at her, it took all of her training to mask her reaction to the haunted and broken look in those eyes, normally so warm and loving. What Chuck said next just tore into her even more, "How many people have I killed today, to save my crazy old dad who is even crazier than ever?" On one level her heart lifted to hear that her Chuck, who loathed pain and killing for any reason, hadn't changed, but the fact that he was directing all that loathing upon himself for what he had to do to pull this off, she didn't know how she could bear that.

Sarah couldn't speak for a few minutes, trying to find the words to take some of his pain away, but none came, so she did the one thing that she knew could get through to him and let him know what she was feeling, she kissed him. It wasn't one of their usual kisses, sweet and loving, it was rough, raw, and conveyed the desperation that they both felt at that moment, going on for several minutes until they'd both calmed enough to actually talk. She tried to be logical as she pointed out that the reasoning they'd used about going in and wiping out the facility, and stopping the Intersect being re-created was sound, how it protected vast numbers of INNOCENT people who could have, would have, been harmed if something like the Intersect was in the hands of the type of people who wanted it, but she knew that none of that was taking away his awareness of or focus on the blood that was on his hands at that moment. They talked for over an hour, by the end of their discussion, he wasn't OK with what he'd had to do, but he could accept that it was the right thing to do, a difficult position to reach with a man who was fine with self sacrifice, but who had trouble with others' sacrifice.

When Chuck had settled to the point where he could discuss things, he thought it was time to try and talk to his father, so Sarah went to get him and Casey and bring them back into the command room. Casey looked at her with a question in his eye, she gave him a so so hand gesture, to which he nodded but looked sad as he came back to the command room. They sat his father across from Chuck with Casey beside him, Sarah sat beside Chuck. Chuck looked at him for a minute, but his opening words were a shock to all of them. "Are you sane, Dad? Because what I've seen so far makes me rather doubt that." Stephen looked at him, opening and closing his mouth a few times before swallowing and saying "I think so, I try to keep things in order, but everything in my brain is going, going.." He waved his hands around in the air a little. Chuck nodded, he knew more than anyone what the early versions of the Intersect did to your head, and the one in his father's head was even more raw than the first one he'd received (well, 2nd one really, the version he got when he was 6 was raw, but it had laid dormant for over 20 years after that) The Gretas had had trouble with version 2, they didn't go crazy but their behaviour was seriously affected. Sarah and Morgan had been exposed to a later version, but that one had been tampered with to get at him. Shaw, well Shaw was unhinged BEFORE he got the Intersect, so that couldn't be entirely blamed for his state of mind. As his father was capable of rational discussion he continued. "You know that we need to get the Intersect out of your head before it DOES drive you crazy, don't you?" His father nodded. From there, Chuck basically laid out a road map of what they needed to do to remove the Intersect and give his father a chance of regaining his stability, first asking whether the original code of his Intersect was still around, when his father said yes, he nodded, that made things a lot simpler, as they could tailor a suppression device for that version.

Sarah and Casey thought it was strange that Chuck wasn't discussing anything other than his father's Intersect, but had faith that he knew what he was doing. Once the initial question was out of the way, they began to understand as he laid out the plan on how to proceed. Chuck pointed out that, to stay under the radar and keep the governments convinced he was dead, he couldn't do what he'd been doing before. Sooner or later, they'd be able to track him with utilities records, IR imaging etc like Chuck had, so he couldn't have anything that would give him away. As his father began to speak, Chuck just held up a finger and continued, explaining that he'd set up secure, untraceable remote access into the Carmichael Industries systems, so he could do whatever processing he needed to on the systems there, if they needed to upgrade, that was fine, they could handle that. Stephen asked whether Carmichael Industries could be trusted and he nodded, waving his hands around the table and saying "WE are Carmichael Industries, the three of us own the business, and the only other people we have are Casey's daughter, Alex, and Jeff, you'll like Jeff, he's more paranoid than you are." finishing with a grin. Sarah smiled and hugged his arm, happy to have her husband back for the first time in days. Stephen looked around the table with a confused look, but he was also looking relieved and hopeful, maybe this could work out.

Once the initial issue was sorted out, Chuck went on to what he thought was the best way to approach things, saying that he thought it would be best for his father to come back to the States, at least for now, as they could get to him quickly if he needed them, and he would stand out if he was in another country where he didn't know the language, Sarah and Casey had a few safe houses established where he could hole up while he got himself together, and they could work out something else long term later if it was needed. Ellie would obviously want to see him, and let him meet his granddaughter (Stephen looked up, wide eyed, at that and Sarah quickly dug a picture of Clara out of her wallet to hand to him). Chuck went on as his father was looking wistfully at the picture of his granddaughter, and the next bombshell hit him much harder. "I'm not sure whether it's safe to let Mom know that you're alive yet, we're not entirely sure of her allegiances or loyalties at the moment." Stephen dropped Clara's picture as he stared at Chuck, Sarah quickly got up to got around the table and put her hand on his shoulder, as he looked shocked.

Chuck quickly ran though the high points of their hunt for his mother, taking down Volkoff Industries and getting his mother home (skipping over the number of times they were all almost killed and the other less unsavoury elements). He explained that she was back in the CIA now, and she never stopped being a spy, which led to their concerns that his mother may not be able to put family over her duty to country and the agency. He did concede that, if his father desperately wanted to see her, they could try and organise a way for it to be done safely, though that would probably entail drugging her, removing any and all tracking devices that she had on her and transporting her to a safe location for the meeting.

While Stephen was trying to digest that information, Sarah shared a look with Chuck across the table, and smiled when he gave her a questioning look, so he added "While we're filling you in on things, Dad, you'll have another grandchild soon, Sarah's pregnant." Stephen looked up at her to ask "Really?" and hugged her when she smiled and nodded.

With the immediate and family stuff out of the way, they filled his father in on the other things that had been happening, starting with the bits that had been, or would be, closest to him, and moving out from there. They explained that they were all out of the CIA and NSA now (skipping over the events that led to that), and started Carmichael Industries as an independent organisation with the money they got from Hartley and Vivian as a wedding present (when Stephen looked up at that, Chuck quickly filled in the fact that Vivian was Alexei Volkoff's daughter, when rogue elements of the CIA were trying to stop him getting something from Volkoff, they used a suppression device to wipe out the Alexei Volkoff persona, so Hartley was back, and he and his daughter had disappeared with some untraceable Ids that Casey had, as a parting gift they liquidated Volkoff Industries and gifted the entire fortune, $877 million, to them as a wedding present, finishing with, "But it's pretty much all gone now, especially after what this exercise cost.") Then they went on with what they were saying, that they'd started CI as an independent spy firm when they got married and got out of the CIA/NSA, things were rocky at first and their money was frozen, then they started to pick up. When Chuck and Sarah started thinking about settling down, they re-considered being in the spy game, with all the danger that was around them (that made Sarah think about what Casey had filled her in on prior to this, and she shuddered), and they agreed to change it to a cyber intelligence firm. They made plans, and then they had a couple of big roadblocks (Chuck reached out to Sarah to squeeze her hand), but they'd finally gotten rid of all the old setup and had started anew a few months ago. Of course they did get dragged back into that side to do this operation and keep the governments away from the Intersect, but they WERE out of the business.

Having given Stephen quite enough to think about and give him a headache, they left him to get a bit of rest and went forward to see how long it would be before they landed.

When they'd paid off the team and disposed of the equipment they headed home, dropping Casey and Stephen off first so that Casey could get Stephen stashed away in one of his safe houses. Once home, Chuck went hunting the source code for his father's Intersect and started building the suppression device they'd use once the code was set up properly. Sarah stepped back into running the business, given that all three of them had been largely absent for a couple of weeks now. She quietly told Alex that her Dad would be back soon, and that he was just making sure that their charge was safely ensconced in his new digs.

It wasn't until a couple of days after they got home that they started to relax, and then at 9:00 PM they had a knock on the door and when they checked the monitors there were some rather large men waiting outside. Chuck waved Sarah back out of sight, telling her to hide her gun, and then went to open the door innocently. He gave up the act when a diminutive redhead stepped out from behind one of the large men and curtly told them to stand down and wait for her there as she walked briskly past Chuck and into the house.

Once inside and he'd closed the door, she looked from him to Sarah and asked if they had anywhere that they could talk where they definitely wouldn't be heard? Chuck nodded and led the way to the study. Once they were inside, with the door closed and wide spectrum white noise generators and signal jammers going, she asked if they thought she didn't know what they'd done? Sarah and Chuck looked at each other and then Sarah spoke. "No, we expected that you'd know but hoped that you would agree with the approach that we took, and would support us in keeping it quiet, were our hopes unfounded?" The General looked at her and then shook her head. "That technology is too dangerous to be in the hands of most people in our field, especially given the fact that Chuck is the only one who could host it without serious mental problems, and it almost made him come undone more than once." She paused for a few moments and then looked at Chuck, asking whether his father was killed in the explosions, or did they use them to cover the fact that he was removed? Chuck and Sarah looked at each other and she slowly nodded, so he looked back to the General and told her that they'd extracted his father, but all other personnel in the Intersect area were destroyed in the explosion. She could see in his eyes what that cost him and mused that Bryce Larkin had been right back at Stanford, Chuck was too good a person for this life, it would destroy him, she was glad that they'd made the decision to leave it. She asked a few general questions about how they'd handle things, to determine whether their plan was likely to come undone, but they seemed to have it mapped out in a way that should hold up, so she wished them luck. She also asked whether their previous agreements to work under contract on cyber intelligence issues would continue, and was relieved (and pleased) that they confirmed that they would.

Before she turned to leave, Chuck asked for a favour, he asked if he could get the designs and schematics of the suppression device that was used on Alexei Volkoff, without anyone else knowing? The General raised her eyebrow at that so he explained that his father's mental state was borderline, so they needed to get the Intersect out of his head before it was too late (she looked at him wide eyed at that point, because they'd never told anyone else that his father was carrying an early version of the Intersect), and the design that worked on Alexei Volkoff had a better chance of working than one designed specifically for later versions of the Intersect. At that she nodded and said that she'd see what she could do.

As they were walking her out, Chuck said "By the way, we haven't gotten around to telling many people yet due to the other issues, but Sarah's pregnant, we're going to have a baby." She looked at them sternly and said that she hoped their offspring would hold off on world domination until their mid teens, at least, and then grinned and congratulated them.

As the door opened, her "large men" were shocked to see a big smile on the General's face, but that disappeared in an instant and Iron Pants was back, as she curtly ordered them into action.


	9. Ghosts

**He's almost there, but not quite.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters...**

Casey officially flew in a week after Chuck and Sarah came back from their "interstate business trip". Alex knew that there were things that they weren't telling her or Jeff, and the fact that her father actually asked her not to pry into them showed their importance. Chuck was getting Jeff to help him with some elements of the new project he started when he got back into the office, but he wasn't himself, he'd told Jeff that he wouldn't accept ANY deviation or error, no exceeding the parameters or pushing the boundaries at all, he did apologise, but this was something so critical that he wouldn't accept any errors at all. She also noted, without comment, the new remote accesses that were being heavily used since they came back, while they were all in the office. It was obvious that someone else was on the team, but she and Jeff weren't in the loop, that wasn't like them at all, but if Chuck, Sarah and her father were so convinced that this was all important, she wasn't about to test the limits.

The day after Casey got back, he and Chuck took off with Chuck's new project and a pile of other equipment, and the send-off that Sarah gave Chuck indicated that what they were doing was something big, especially to Chuck.

Chuck's first step was to collect Ellie to bring her to the safe house, she'd had to agree to his terms unquestioningly to be included in this, and that meant that she couldn't tell Devon or anyone else anything about what she was doing, the cover was that she was consulting on a procedure for an eccentric recluse and would be out of contact for up to 2 weeks. She took a commercial flight to another city, then transferred to a private jet which disappeared, she hated excluding Devon but the fact was that Chuck didn't trust him to keep their secret, while he was glad he made Ellie happy, he was basically an idiot savant, a gifted heart surgeon but a complete retard in all other aspects. They could NOT trust an idiot with their secrets when every government and nefarious organisation in the world was still looking for any evidence that Orion was alive.

Chuck got Ellie to the safe house in secret, while Casey took all the equipment in separately. Ellie kept trying to question Chuck about how their father was alive and how he recovered him and was shocked when he coldly shut her down, she was too tied up in what she needed to see the pain and self loathing in his eyes when she kept demanding answers. When they arrived, Casey saw in Chuck's eyes what was happening, so when she kept demanding answers he just grabbed her and forcedly dragged her to another room. She was terrified by the anger in his eyes as he told her to STOP asking Chuck about what happened, he'd had to do things that he was having serious trouble living with to rescue their father, and her stupid questions and demands were ripping into the wounds in him. He told her that if she was too self centred to do what she'd agreed to do without harming Chuck any more, he'd just drug her for the time she was there and do the tests himself, then dump her back at the end, that would be the last time she saw any of them. She may have ignored what Chuck was trying to get through to her, but she paid attention to Casey, and she had no question that this terrifying man was quite serious about what he'd do if she didn't do exactly what she as told to. When they returned to Chuck, she saw for the first time what had been in his eyes the whole time.

Chuck didn't say anything, just led her to their father and gave them a little time to catch up while he and Casey set up the equipment. As soon as the equipment was set up, Casey took over, ordering Ellie to get started on the testing process, which she did immediately. Once they had the baseline testing done, they used the suppression device on him and re-ran the tests. The device wasn't 100% effective, so Chuck logged into CI to tweak the parameters on the code and re-load the suppression device for another test. They repeated this process a number of times over the next couple of days, each iteration gleaned some improvement, and Stephen was getting notably calmer and more comfortable as the process progressed.

It took a day for Ellie to summon the courage to try to talk to Chuck, she stood beside him and spoke his name, when he didn't react she just said "I'm sorry", and left him when he nodded without looking up.

After a couple of days of tweaking and re-running the suppression device, they decided that they'd reached the point where no more significant improvements could be made, the scans showed a marked drop in abnormal brain activity in the affected areas. Stephen's state of mind and comfort levels were significantly better, it appeared that his sanity was safe now, and they could proceed with trying to create a life for him where he could be protected from those looking for him, and hopefully happy. Another day or so of testing collected all the data for in depth analysis and then they packed up the equipment and arranged to go back. Chuck and Casey's roles were reversed for the return trip, Chuck took the equipment back while Casey returned Ellie to her family.

On the way back, Ellie faced up to Casey and asked what happened to Chuck, he looked her in the eye, and still furious about her unthinking damage to his friend, her brother, told her. "The only way to get your father out and protect the secrets that could harm millions of people was to destroy the facility where they had him, along with anyone who knew enough to continue what your father was working on." She just looked at him. "The decision had to be made to do that, and your brother wouldn't pass that off onto anyone else, so he made it. I am capable of doing that without it destroying me, he isn't, he just isn't wired that way. He came up with the plan and made the call to destroy the labs where your father was working, along with everyone working in them to save your father and protect millions, and it is destroying him. Then you just kept demanding that he tell you what had happened and ignored what it was doing to him." She stared at him in shock and horror, and he leaned in to state his final point into her face "Chuck isn't the monster here, he is a hero, YOU are the monster. If you harm him any more you'll have me to deal with, and Sarah."

Chuck got back to CI before Casey, Sarah was happy to have him back, and glad that the process went well, but he was "off", so she asked Casey what had happened when he got back. Casey explained what he'd seen, and what he'd said to Ellie, both in the safe house, and on the trip back. Sarah was furious, and Casey had to forcibly restrain her from going to deal with Ellie. When she calmed down, she just concentrated on looking after Chuck, though she mused that the world was pretty screwed up when the only people who could see the true worth of her wonderful man were killers like her and Casey, while the "normal" people judged him for doing the right thing for them, ignoring the cost to himself. The fact that his own family harmed him the most just made her hate them at the moment.

Things were "off" in CI, they were dealing with two ghosts, the one who was virtually there but wasn't a person or identity to some of them, and the man who was there without being the person they knew at all. They hoped that this would pass, but they couldn't understand it.


	10. Life Anew

**When all is lost, it is time to start life anew.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters.**

Once she had calmed down enough to see Chuck without upsetting him, Sarah took him home to spend the night lost in each other, to try to take some of the pain away.

While Sarah was trying to look after Chuck, Casey found himself in an unaccustomed role, reassuring others that they would all get through the current situation OK. As they had the office to themselves, they closed up and he, Alex and Jeff sat down to discuss what was happening. He started by telling Jeff that, unless he wanted to move out, he could stay at the house with them indefinitely, Alex's argument for the interim solution made sense, so if it worked for all of them, there was no reason to change it, as they all agreed, he went on. With regard to Chuck's implication that he'd be out if he failed in any way on the latest project, that was something that Chuck was stressing about, was now done, and even if there had been something which caused Chuck to go that far, he would have come back and apologised and asked him to return when he calmed down, at that Jeff visibly relaxed, which brought them to the big issue. He couldn't tell them what had them all worked up yet, but he promised that they'd be told when the situation was less volatile and dangerous, it did relate to the issue that Chuck and Sarah had gone off to deal with, and it was the cause of most of Chuck's current state, so all should be back to "normal" in time. Even with the limited information, what he told them took away much of the uncertainty that both Jeff and Alex were feeling, so they could settle down a little then.

The next day, they were all in the office, Casey was trying to get caught up with the new processes, Chuck was less on edge, and while things were still strange, it was workable. Chuck came into Jeff's office early and apologised for the way things had been, he'd been stressing over something that was ultra critical and shouldn't have handled things the way he did. He still seemed stressed and spent a good deal of time on secret video calls that only Sarah or Casey were privy to, but it was more like "old" Chuck than it had been for a while. Sarah was buried in her work, and staying close to Chuck most of the time, she was spending time with Alex, but it wasn't as casual as it had been before. They all hoped that things would settle down relatively quickly, so they could get back to where they were before.

Casey was the one liaising with Ellie on Stephen's test results, and told her on no uncertain terms that she had no recourse, Chuck was too fragile to deal with her as yet and Sarah was too angry.

While awaiting the analysis of the results, Chuck arranged for a good therapist to have sessions with his father to review and assist in his mental stability, both before and after he had discussions with him about the steps that he proposed they should take to give him the best options. The most extreme of these steps were the surgeries he proposed to Stephen. Given that the outlook was good for his mental health with the Intersect largely suppressed, if he was to lead a full life, they had to do what they could to mask or modify the identifying traits that could be used to locate him, he explained to his father the methods he'd used to get evidence that he was where they believed he was. While other organisations may take longer to track him down, the mechanisms were all available, so it wouldn't be safe for him to leave the safe houses without altering those identifying traits. The obvious issue of plastic surgery was part of it, but that wasn't enough, what Chuck was proposing included voice box alterations to change his voice, along with speak therapy, and physical changes and physiotherapy to alter his movement patterns.

Hopefully if all these worked, in time (possibly years down the track), his father could lead a more "normal" life without constantly looking over his shoulder. This was all a lot to deal with, which why Chuck was organising the on-going therapy sessions, and had these discussions with his father face to face where possible. (He used the Nighthawk, it had never been recovered after he "borrowed" it from Castle to try and save Sarah, the weapons systems had been downgraded and modified for local control, and a bike that could travel at airplane speeds let him do the trip to and from the safe houses overnight without drawing anywhere near the attention that planes would.) The choice was his father's, of course, he just presented the rationale as to why he was recommending it without sugar coating anything, there would be a good deal of pain and suffering involved in these procedures, and he respected his father too much to pretend otherwise.

He also told him what was done at the facility that they took him from to make it impossible to definitively determine whether his remains were there or not. The government and other organisations still suspected that Stephen may be out there, but at this time they had no proof, so if they could remove the normal identifiers he may be able to stay free. (Well, one government representative knew, but they lived in hope that she'd honour her word and commitment to keep the secret inside the circle, and she hadn't betrayed their trust in her yet.) To Stephen's credit, he did see the pain and self loathing in Chuck's eyes when he described what was done, and understood what it took for him to do that, they both shed tears the night they discussed what happened during the extraction.

With the information that Chuck gave him, and the prospect if not hope that a more "normal" life could be waiting for him if he made all the changes that Chuck laid out, Stephen agreed with the reasoning and committed to trying that path, understanding that there was no guarantee that it would all work, but he'd been in hiding for over 15 years and the issues that Chuck laid out had repeatedly tripped him up, even when he wasn't being hunted the way he was now, so he was prepared to take the risk, in hope that his son's plan could work.

Stephen talked to Ellie at times, calling Carmichael Industries and getting re-routed to her phone by Casey or Sarah (it hurt him that Chuck and Ellie weren't speaking, but he understood now what had happened and how that affected Chuck), but when he was trying to make casual conversation he slipped up and asked Ellie if she was excited about Sarah's baby, which prompted her to call Sarah. The call did not go well, Ellie was being demanding and petulant, which triggered Sarah's anger about what had happened on the trip to the safe house with Chuck. Ellie found that the fear she'd had of Casey when he was angry with her was nothing compared to the terror that Sarah invoked when she informed her in that cold, dispassionate voice that Ellie had no place or connection in regard to her baby, and that she'd stay away from her family if she was at all sensible. When she hung up the phone, Sarah found that she'd broken all her nails though gripping her desk so hard, she looked up to see Chuck in the doorway watching her, he came over to hold her, and she broke down as soon as she felt his arms around her. After a while, she explained that, as angry as she was for what Ellie had done to him, and she had no doubt that that was justified, she was ashamed of herself as she had done worse than that to him many times over he course of their life together. Chuck just shooshed her as he stroked her hair and kissed her on the head, then kissed her lips as she raised her teary face to him.

Stephen started working on CI projects with Chuck, Sarah and even Jeff sometimes, given that his name obviously couldn't be used, he became Stefan Kowalski. Whenever there was time for lessons, Sarah was teaching him Polish, and forcing him to speak it most of the time, as speaking Polish and acquiring a bit of an accent helped build the identity. Together, they built an identity that was sustainable and over time they settled him into Stefan to the point where he instinctively reacted to that, rather than his old name. The team understood that no mention of their new team member was to be made outside of the CI offices, ever. Jeff and Alex were under the impression that he was located somewhere in Europe, and that was why he always remoted into CI, rather than working directly with them.

His father was upset about having to be cautious of Mary, but the fact that she never made the effort to follow up with them about whether there was any chance that he survived or what happened to him beyond the initial semi-official enquiries appeared to indicate that they'd been right to be concerned, and that she was a CIA agent first, and a wife and mother second. Sarah was angry about that, too, she was as much a spy as Mary, if not as long (obviously), but she wouldn't have given up on the man she loved, ever. She had to concede that the fact that she was angry at everything (except Chuck) could have something to do with the pregnancy and the changes it was wreaking on her body, but she didn't think that that was the whole reason, and neither did Chuck when she discussed it.

Sarah was glad that she had her mother back in her life now, without her she would have had no-one to talk to about the pregnancy and what it was doing to her, now that she and Ellie weren't on speaking terms. Alex was sympathetic, but had never been pregnant, so didn't have any experience with the issues. She could and did talk to Chuck but he didn't know much about what happened during pregnancy, he had the empirical information in the Intersect, and what he gleaned from his extensive research on all aspects of pregnancy (which left him looking worried and frightened quite often), but that didn't really relate to what she was going through, all he could do was try and support her as much as possible, and he did that so well. She did sometimes catch up with Carina, but she was less in touch with the issues than Chuck was. So, having her mother to talk to was the only thing that seemed to keep her sane sometimes.

The family disagreement escalated when Devon called Chuck to tell him that he had to fix things with Ellie, at which point he found that Sarah wasn't the only one who could be terrifying when pushed. Chuck informed his brother in law with small, simple words and a calm, quiet tone of infinite malice that, a, as usual, he didn't know what he was talking about, b, he was interfering in things that were absolutely none of his business, c, if and when he decided to forgive his sister for what she had done and sort things out with her, he would do exactly that, sort it out with HER, d, if he EVER even implied that Chuck should "sort out his wife" again, Chuck would deal with him directly, and in a way that he would not like at all, and e, he should lose Chuck and Sarah's numbers, as if either of them ever heard from him like this again, there would be repercussions. At the end of this he quietly asked whether Devon understood what he'd said to him? At the stuttered affirmative from his brother in law he said "Good, as you are starting to make me angry, and I can assure you that you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." and with that, hung up.

Chuck wasn't happy about how things were going, but he wasn't able to get past his reaction to his sister as yet, and he certainly wasn't in the mood to take crap from his stupid blow-hard brother in law. He had his own life to work out, a business that they were trying to get established, a wonderful wife who was pregnant, and was trying to give his father a new life, while keeping him hidden from just about every government and nefarious organisation in the world, he had quite enough on his plate without worrying about the petty things.

At least Carmichael Industries had plenty of work coming in, a good deal of it contracts from General Beckman. It wasn't charity, in the time they were her team, she knew better than anyone that when she told anyone (even them) that she had "the best people working on it", she was referring to them, and that was largely Chuck. Chuck and his father were the most brilliant men that she, or anyone else, was ever likely to meet, the things that both of them had done were incredible, and couldn't be matched by anyone else the American government could find, and by the records she'd seen, other governments were in the same boat. One of the most amazing things about Chuck, though, was how he brought out he best in others. When Agent Walker and Major Casey were assigned to the Intersect project, they were the best of the best in their fields, but that was largely cleaning up whatever messes that their respective agencies had to deal with. Once exposed to Chuck, they grew and expanded to show their true potential in so many ways, some of the powers that be bemoaned the fact that their elite killers were gone, had been made soft by exposure to this Bartowski individual, but they ignored how much more was accomplished as a result of those changes. If she wanted to be totally honest, he'd had a similar affect on her. She, too, had changed so much from the time that she agreed to the termination order on him to tidy up loose ends. She'd never admit it to anyone, not even Roan, but she regarded this ragtag group as her family in her heart now.

To assist them in meeting their contracts, she fast tracked the clearances of the three people her old team brought into Carmichael Industries. (Though she had a degree of satisfaction in wiping all clearances and accesses for Morgan Grimes as soon as they advised her that all ties between him and CI had been severed, she never liked or trusted that man.) Alexandra McHugh was easy, with an impeccable background and record and all the qualifications to get into any agency she chose, she was a credit to her father, and she had known the girl's father longer than anyone else involved. Jeffrey Barnes was a tad more difficult, the list of misdemeanours , his mother being in prison etc all painted a bad picture, but she was aware of the good work he'd done at Chuck's behest, so she could justify the approval without too much trouble. Stefan Kowalski was another matter, his records and credentials were all impeccable and verified, going back 2 generations, but she knew for a fact they were less than 2 weeks old, Chuck had done a masterful job of inserting and/or amending records across the world, many of them located in the most "un-crackable" systems that existed, and none of what he had done could be traced. He had created an identity which stood up to the highest scrutiny, all in a matter of weeks, so with a smile she approved the requested clearances, actually quite pleased that Bartowski Senior would be joining Bartowski Junior to deal with the world's problems.


	11. B Team

**Ellie reconciles with Chuck and Sarah and Sarah tries to deal with life changes.**

**Myriad = "Many and varied", you can't have a many and varied OF, can you?**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters.**

With Chuck's increasing paranoia about Sarah doing anything risky while she was pregnant, Casey and Alex ended up doing pretty much all the field work, with Chuck and Sarah supporting them. This, of course, equated to Chuck and Sarah being the B Team again, and that was something Sarah was NOT happy about. It didn't help when Chuck tried to lighten the mood by pointing out that at least there were no Gretas this time. Sarah snapped at him and then started to cry, so he just held her. They both knew that it was partly coming out of the changes that the pregnancy was creating in her body, but there was no way that Chuck was going to say that. He knew that she loved him, but he also knew that she could do serious damage to him if he triggered the wrong response, especially as he wouldn't do anything to protect himself that could harm her in any way.

Luckily the new CI had far less field work than the old CI, so there were fewer instances to trigger the aggravation. Sarah still had a full workload scoping and negotiating customer engagements, reviewing security mechanisms and providing advice on improvements, doing analysis on personnel involved in customer operations, and the myriad other functions of CI's Chief Security Officer, she was just getting frustrated about not being able to do everything the way she used to. The pregnancy meant that she wasn't at the forefront of everything now, and she couldn't handle taking a back seat in the things that she wanted to run with. In her calmer moments she could accept that Chuck wasn't doing anything differently, he'd always worried about her, pretty much from day one, but the baby was a new part of her that could be harmed, and worry about the baby was affecting both of them, so she had to try to separate that from her interactions with Chuck. The fact that, as much as she loved Chuck, he could be incredibly infuriating much of the time didn't help in that endeavour.

With Casey back, he stepped up to his share of the training duties, taking over most of the physical training sessions in view of Sarah's condition. Sarah sat in on all the training sessions, partly to pick up what Casey had to offer that may be a better option than what she had in her own repertoire, but also to offer a better alternative where she DID have one. She could also help in getting something across better than he was doing quite often. Alex and Chuck were in all the training sessions, and even Jeff attended the easier sessions. No-one ever expected Jeff to be involved in any operations of that nature, but CI, and in particular Chuck, was still on a lot of nefarious organisations' and individuals' lists for payback in regard to their activities in the past, so being able to protect himself to some degree was a good idea, and the training was a great fitness workout, too. Another aspect of it was that the training and discussions during the sessions helped Alex and Jeff get a better understanding of what CI was, underneath, and be more a part of CI, a question about Stefan was covered off with he may be there some time in the future, but for now he couldn't be present.

With regard to training, they found that Jeff offered some good and/or better alternatives to the things that Chuck or the others were showing them on the technology side, which helped with his self confidence and raised the bar on Casey's, and the others', impression of him, as Sarah and Casey had noted in the past, Stalker Jeff had had some surprisingly impressive spy skills, this all helped make him more a part of the CI family.

In the meantime, they were all working on the contract work that was coming into CI, Jeff's technical focus meant that he was mostly working with Chuck or Stefan, but he was also providing technical support for Sarah, Casey and Alex on other jobs. He couldn't get over the nagging feeling that there was something familiar about Stefan, but he put that down to residual affects of the drugs and other abuse he'd put himself through all those years, as he also thought that Stefan's voice was changing (which was obviously crazy), and the sense of familiarity was fading.

Things progressed along this path for a couple of months before they had a visitor in the Carmichael Industries office, an extremely distraught Ellie Woodcomb. When Chuck and Sarah came out of their offices she rushed to them with tears in her eyes, saying that she had to fix what she'd done. Sarah said that she'd leave them alone to sort things out and started to turn away, but Ellie grabbed her hand and begged her to stay, saying that she needed to make things right with both of them, so Sarah capitulated and they all went into Sarah's office and shut the door. Knowing that this would be a heavy session, Sarah went to the bar and made drinks for them all, grimacing that her's had to be non-alcoholic due to the baby. Bringing the drinks back she sat beside Chuck and waited for Ellie to speak. Neither of them were expecting her opening words, after she'd taken a couple of gulps of her drink, "Casey's right, I am a monster.".

Ellie explained what Casey had told her on the way back from the safe house, and when Chuck tensed she shook her head, saying, "No, he was right, and so were you." looking at Sarah. She explained that she'd spent a lot of time thinking about what she'd been told and how she'd acted when she'd been talking to them, and the shame she felt as she realised what she'd done. It wasn't until after the first time that Casey had a go at her that she actually LOOKED at Chuck and saw the affect her demands on him had, she'd been tied up in getting the information she believed she had a right to know, and wasn't paying any attention to him, other than to demand that he answer her. At that point she did not understand what she was asking for, that didn't come until the trip back from the safe house when Casey told her what Chuck had had to do to save her father and stop the organisation from getting and using the Intersect for whatever purposes they had in mind. Even then, she hadn't thought about WHY he had to do it or what it did to him, she was just shocked and horrified that her little brother could actually do something that terrible, she hadn't yet processed what Casey said about the fact that HE could handle doing something like that, but Chuck couldn't without it destroying him. Chuck looked at her and asked. "Casey said that?" She nodded and said that he'd been quite passionate about it, and terrifying, both times that he put her in her place. At that she gave a typically Ellie expression as she wiped away some tears and Sarah got up to refill her drink. After thanking Sarah and taking a sip from her drink, Ellie continued, explaining that she still didn't consider the issues involved until their Dad had let slip that Sarah was pregnant and she'd called her to, well, demand to know what was going on. She looked from Sarah to Chuck and asked if he knew how terrifying his wife could be when she was angry? Chuck nodded with a little grin, squeezing Sarah's hand, and Sarah went to speak but Ellie cut her off, saying. "No, you were right, what I did was unforgivable and I didn't see it until you shot me down the way you did, I judged him and reacted without bothering to find out why he'd had to go to those lengths." She was quiet for a while before continuing, explaining that she started to really consider what Casey and Sarah had told her after that, and she was ashamed of herself, she'd pulled every bit of what she'd been told apart and examined it and looked at the implications like, "Like we do", looking up at Chuck. After a month or so of that she thought she had a proper understanding of what she'd been told and the reasons behind their actions, and she was thoroughly ashamed that she had never once ASKED about this, she had just demanded to be told what had happened and judged Chuck on the face value of what she heard. Then Devon told her about his call to Chuck and what Chuck had had the gall to say to him, after slapping him so hard that she knocked him down, she told him to look after Clara, bought a ticket and came here. At that she looked up at both of them and asked if they could forgive her? Chuck just went to her, hugged her and said "Of course!" and Sarah came over to put her arm around her from the other side while she was in Chuck's arms. All three of them sat there and cried for a while, it was tears of relief more than anything, as they were all releasing the issues that had been hurting them.

Afterwards they sat and talked for a while longer about other things, among them the course their father had agreed to follow in hope that he could get his life back, to a degree at least, in time. Chuck explained that he thought it would be better to wait until the physical and voice changes were mostly done before she took Clara to see him, as the changes would confuse her if he looked and sounded different later. Sarah explained that they had created a new identity for him and he was getting settled into that identity, so from now on he'd be known as Stefan Kowalski, rather than Stephen Bartowski, and he would have more of a Polish accent as time went on. To get the unpleasant issues out if the way in one go, he re-iterated that no-one else, including Devon, could know about their father's new identity, or even that he was alive, asking whether Devon had found out yet? Ellie shook her head, explaining that she'd been tied up in all the confusion and upset and hadn't been ready to discuss anything. Chuck also asked whether she had discussed anything with Mom, or whether Mom had asked her about Dad? Ellie again shook her head, she had had a few discussions with their mother, but they were all about Clara or other things. She was surprised and concerned when Chuck's response was "Good, don't." Chuck explained their concerns about their mother's affiliations and loyalties, and how his primary concern was her first loyalties were to the government and agency, rather than the family, so he wasn't sure what she'd do with that information. After all, if family was her first focus, wouldn't she have been chasing them for any and all news about their father? Ellie was upset by this line of thought, but had to agree that the approach made more sense than blindly trusting and putting their father at risk, so she agreed not to say anything to Devon or their mother. It helped that she wasn't happy with her husband at the moment, even more so after she heard Chuck being ordered to sort his wife out on the recording of the call (when she couldn't believe that he would say that, Chuck told him that all calls were recorded and asked whether she wanted to hear it, not worried about her hearing what he said, so she said yes), she was a bit surprised that Chuck hadn't flown straight over to respond to THAT in person, especially as she watched his hands working when HE listened to it again.

Once they were through the serious discussions, the family wasn't exactly back together, but THEY were, she had her brother and sister in law back, AND their father was back from the dead, it was all a massive weight off all of them. Around that point Chuck and Sarah looked at each other with a smile, realising that Ellie had no idea who else was working there, so on the precept of showing her the new offices, they gave her the tour. Things were a bit awkward when she saw Casey, but she thanked him for telling her the truth about what happened, it took her a while to understand, but she couldn't have done that without him making her listen. She didn't know what to say when she saw Alex, they'd told her the basics about Morgan, but given the more recent issues, she realised that there was almost certainly far more too it than she'd believed, she'd ask Chuck about that some other time, so she just hugged her. When Chuck said "I think you know Jeff?" with a grin, she just stopped and stared, for a start, Jeff looked more respectable, successful, and confident than she'd have believed that he ever could, he was a different man, and she couldn't understand why Chuck hadn't told her he was there at CI. She instinctively rushed in for a big Ellie hug (which had Jeff blushing and bemused) and gave Chuck one of her "What the hell, Chuck?" looks over his shoulder, Chuck just said that things had been rather complicated recently. At that she just said "Now there's a word that I haven't missed.", which had the others wondering what was going on as she, Chuck and Sarah laughed.

After she'd had a chat to their father from the office, they wound up Ellie's visit and got her back on the plane home, comfortable in the fact that they were all good again. That night was the first good night's sleep any of them had had in a while, without their issues hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.


	12. A Real Girl

**This one's made me realise another parallel to Firefly in Chuck, many aspects of pre-Chuck Sarah are similar to River in Firefly, she'd been made into a weapon and had to try to find herself after that, too.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters..**

Sarah was glad that they'd sorted things out with Ellie, but she REALLY needed to sort out herself. She was going to be a mother in 4-5 months and she didn't know what to do with herself now, let alone then. The bickering and aggravation over what she could and couldn't do on their jobs was driving her crazy, if this kept up she was going to take someone's head off and the most likely recipient of that was Chuck. Luckily her man was smart enough to understand that and was making a big effort to keep his mouth shut at the moment.

Part of the problem was that she really had no-one to talk to about it, Chuck was there any time she needed him, but this wasn't something she could talk to him about without hurting him, Ellie was there again, but she was too close to Chuck to discuss it dispassionately, Alex was there to talk, but had no experience of what the issues of pregnancy and parenthood were, and Carina was even worse in that respect, she could talk to her mother, but she didn't understand what their life was like, and explaining that to her would just make her worry... Sarah suddenly smiled, realising that there WAS someone who understood most of the issues, and her, and who she could talk to about this.

She got up and strolled across the office, the smile on her face partly hope that she'd get the answers she needed just now, and a large part the knowledge of how uncomfortable this would make him, "Casey, do you have a minute?" He looked up, eyes narrowing as he could tell from her expression that he wasn't going to like this, but gave in and said "Yeah, what do you want?" A sense of impending doom settled over him as she closed the door and sat down.

Sarah launched into what was bothering her, none of which was news to Casey, as well as being a master spy, he was a man of great depth of feeling, even if it had taken years of exposure to Chuck to unlock that (not that he'd ever actually come out and admit that), when she finished her explanation, he sat back and sighed. He looked at her and asked why she was still asking this? Then he started through the events of the past 5 ½ years or so that all led up to this moment, and made it inevitable.

"Do you remember the number of times we had discussions about you being compromised with Bartowski? You fought me about taking him into custody the first night when we officially engaged him and ascertained that he had the Intersect in his head, even that early you were so attached to him that you understood what he needed and were prepared to put those needs over protocol, yes, you were right, but you wouldn't have done that it you hadn't already been compromised, you and I were the same when we came into that assignment, and neither of us would have gone against orders that way before we met him. From then on, you were always holding his hand or touching him any chance you got, not consciously though, you'd both jump when you realised you were doing it (he was always a gentleman about it, I respected that)." She looked at him and he shrugged, saying that it was his job to watch Bartowski and that was impossible to do without seeing how they were together.

"It took you until Larkin came back and the Lon Kirk assignment to ask me (he snorted) about wanting a normal life, and a family, and it was damn obvious that it wasn't Larkin that you were thinking about when you asked that. You had a panic when Chuck brought up marriage and babies about 2 years ago, saying you weren't ready for it, but it was obvious you wanted it. About 9-10 months ago, you panicked again when you thought you were pregnant, but you were upset when you found out that you weren't."

"Anyway, you've been wanting him from the day you met him, and you were thinking about having his babies within about 6 months or so, if not earlier, it's 5 years later now, why can't you accept this is what you want and go with it?"

Sarah sat there with a smile, looking at him, reliving the memories that floated up as he was talking, but that wasn't what she'd come here to ask, so she tried again. She talked about not being able to do her job if she couldn't take action when she needed to, but he shook his head.

"No, it's more that you think you're losing control because other elements are imposing requirements on you, it's not just Chuck who's worried that something may happen to the baby if you're in action, you are too. That last time, when you crashed the Humvee into the compound to get us out, you'd put your seatbelt on to protect the baby, and you NEVER wear a seatbelt (even if everyone else does when you're driving), you're worried about the baby inside you now, and you'll be worried about the baby when they're born. I missed out on Alex's entire childhood, she was a woman by the time I met her, and even so she's changed me. I worry about her all the time and try to take less risks for her sake, so yes, it will change your life, even more for you as this baby is growing inside you and you will raise them, love them, mend their scraped knees and see them turn into a person. But you're not the weapon that you were, Sarah, the weapon died when you met Chuck, you became a whole person capable of doing far more that than that. Being a weapon doesn't define you any more, the fact that you may not be able to wade into a den of terrorists and take out all of them by yourself at the moment MAY have been a failure at one time, but now that's just a very small part of who you are and what you do, so hanging onto that and saying that you're less than you were because you can't do that, here and now, is just stupid."

This time she looked at him, wide eyed. She'd seen glimpses of this man but he'd never shown this much of himself, or forced to look at herself, this way before. He was right, and he'd answered her question perfectly, it was OK to be a real girl, no, it was great, and now she could see that. He tried to fend her of when she thanked him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but he couldn't hide the smile on his face.

On her way back to her office she went through Chuck's to kiss him and tell him that she loved him, something he never objected to, but he wasn't used to seeing her look so calm and content lately, it was nice. As Sarah stepped from Chuck's office into her's, she grimaced, Casey was right, scheming and fighting wasn't all she did any more, and the state of her desk showed that the recent aggravations were putting her way behind on what she did have to do, so she had to settle down and get through it. As she sat down and started working on the pile, another thought crossed her mind and she initiated a call to Chuck's father, talking to him in Polish when he answered. She was inflexible and wouldn't let him speak English at all as she explained that she wanted her child to have their grandfather present when they were born, and if they were to do that, he had to be able to pull off being Stefan well enough to fool anyone there, even Mary if she turned up, was he up to the challenge? "Stefan" said that he would like to be able to, so they committed to spending at least an hour or two talking each day (in Polish, of course) while they were working, to "bed in" his language skills and accent."Stefan" also committed to doing all his other speech therapy and physiotherapy to address the other markers that Chuck was concerned about, they had 4-5 months to make this work, if they stuck with it, they should be able to pull it off.

Afterwards she explained the plan to Chuck, roping him into it as well, the Intersect 3.0 that he'd loaded at the concert to diffuse the bomb had Ellie's memory mapping enhancements in it. This meant that he retained most of what he flashed on afterwards in "normal" memory, and therefore, he didn't need to keep flashing on Polish, he just needed to practice it, so Chuck spoke to "Stefan" in Polish, too, much of the time to keep up the flow, though they didn't speak anywhere near as much as Sarah did.

Thinking about the enhancements, Chuck realised that he needed to discuss the aspects of the Intersect that he'd found in regard to the new version with Ellie when there was a chance. What appeared to be happening was that all the data loaded via any Intersect version was still there, even though he had been subjected to suppression devices three times now, first by his father, then by his mother, and the third time by Decker. Now that he had the Intersect back again, he found that he could still access all the data from Intersect 1.0, Intersect 2.0, the Fulcrum Intersect and Intersect 3.0, along with any updates he loaded, even the early version he accidentally loaded when he was 6, so it appeared that the suppression devices or processes only removed the Intersect "software", not the data stored. This was probably why Sarah recovered so well after they used the suppression device on her, all they removed was the tainted Intersect "software" in her head. What he wanted to discuss with Ellie was whether she thought it was likely that loading a safe Intersect version (if they could find one) into Sarah would be likely to recover her memories better, and if so, whether it would be safe for her? The question of whether they should was another discussion altogether, as he knew that there were a memories that Sarah would be far better off NOT regaining, like the torment she went through when Quinn used the flash cards on her to remove her memories of their time together.

Anyway, that was something to worry about when they had a chance, for now, things were pretty good, now it didn't look like his wonderful wife would be killing anyone soon, Ellie had sorted things out so they were all back together (the ones who mattered, anyway), his father was on track to have a solid new identity that would hopefully be strong enough for him to get out and lead the life he wanted down the track, they had the team they needed to make a success of CI, and they had plenty of business coming in to pay the bills and expand comfortably. He was still having issues with what they'd had to do to get his father back, and that wouldn't go away for a long time, if ever, but that was the biggest cloud over his head, so he was cautiously optimistic.

Sarah looked through the adjoining door at Chuck and smiled, she knew that look on his face, he was more content that he'd been since Jeff found the references to Orion in the data he was analysing for Casey, she knew that the decisions he'd had to make were the biggest thing tearing him apart, but she also knew that her concerns and problems would have been the next biggest cause of his unhappiness. She was so happy that she'd gone to Casey with her problem, as he'd cut through the rats' nest in her head that was anchoring her to her past and let her see the way ahead, he was a damn good partner and friend, and the person who was the closest to her after Chuck. He was filling in the gaps with the information that Chuck didn't have on that 5 years that Quinn almost took from her, the most important 5 years of her life, she shuddered to think how close she, they, came to losing their life together, starting to cry. Chuck sensed her mood change and came through to her, putting his arms around her. She looked up with a smile, explaining what had made her cry, but also telling him about the talk that she'd had with Casey, and how he'd helped her see that where she was going, being a real girl at last, had made everything alright. For a while, at least, maybe he wouldn't have to put up with a psycho bitch for a wife, Chuck just held her tighter, kissed her and said that she may be psycho at times, but never a bitch, and she was perfect for him. He looked over to where Caseys's office was and asked whether he'd ever told her about the advice Casey gave him about proposing? She just shook her head, so he quickly recounted the story that Casey told him in Castle the night she was taken away to go into Volkoff Industries, about the plans he'd had for a grand proposal to Kathleen at Niagara Falls, which all fell apart so he ended up proposing in some dingy bus stop, and it was still wonderful, so his advice was that you didn't need a perfect location or plan, you just needed you, and the girl you loved, at that he kissed her hair and said that she could probably blame Casey for being proposed to in a hospital corridor, but after all the setbacks there was no way he was going to wait another minute to ask her to be with him forever.


	13. The Bitch is Back

**"I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch**  
><strong>Oh the bitch is back"<strong>

**About time the redhead rejoins the crew, I think.**

**Usual Disclaimer, no rights to any characters...**

Things were starting to get back onto an even keel in the CI offices, Sarah didn't look ready to explode all the time, Chuck got that sad, haunted look on his face very rarely, and even Casey didn't look like he wanted to shoot someone all the time, but things can change...

They thought the day cyclone Ellie blew into the office to sort things out was an event, but that was upstaged when their favourite(?) redhead breezed in, hugging and kissing Chuck to get a rise out of Sarah, winding up Casey by asking about missing her handcuffs again, getting Jeff hot and bothered with one of her looks. (He may be a reformed man, but he was still a guy, and Carina could get any guy to blow his pressure relief valve (well, any guy except Chuck) with one of her looks.)

The only thing that made Carina change her normal outlandish behaviour was Alex, when she saw her there she went into her office to quietly talk to her, Casey was about to charge in there to put a stop to things in there, but Sarah stopped him. She saw the look on Carina's face when she saw Alex and she knew she was seeing another Carina, one she hadn't seen in a very long time, before the spy world and what it put people through had ripped the human face off her, and ripped her heart out. Just as Sarah had still existed underneath the killing machine she'd become before Chuck, Carina still existed underneath the sexbot that was all she let anyone see now, and that Carina was what Sarah saw when she looked at Alex. They talked for a while, then shared a hug, and Carina came out with a softer look on her face,with her standard retort. "Hey Blondie, how's things?"

They went back to Sarah's office and sat to talk, after they got Carina's shock at how obviously pregnant, and "huge", Sarah was now out of the way, they went on to other things. Sarah stiffened when Carina looked through the adjoining door at Chuck and said, "He's like a virus, you know?", unknowingly just managing to ward off the wrath that was about to come down on her by continuing, "He infects everyone he meets with his humanity, his goodness." looking back at a slightly mollified Sarah she said "I've quit, I couldn't do what I was doing any more, after I got exposed to him, and what you've become with him, and what is it about him that lets us accept who we are and assume the identity that we had when when came into his world? You ARE Sarah now, and I feel like I AM Carina now, all those identities that we used to shed like a cheap dress over the years were nothing, who we were when we met him, that seems to define us now." As they talked she told her about the a string of rather bad assignments that she'd had after the last time they'd seen her, and how she couldn't stand wallowing in that shit any more after seeing the good side of people when she was with them, so she quit. She grinned and told her that anyway this, waving down at herself, would only be used for fun from now on. When Sarah asked what she was going to do, she shrugged, saying that she'd work something out, changing the subject to ask how things were going with Chuck and her memories. Sarah played along for a while talking about how the memories were coming back when Chuck, and others, told her stories about what happened in the 5 missing years, and about how things were great on the home front, except for the occasional hiccup. She told her (without going into any details) about the operation that dragged them back into the other side, and how it had affected Chuck, and the rest of them, quite a bit, but it was done now, they just had to handle the aftermath. They also talked about Morgan and what he'd done to them, and Alex, and Ellie and Devon, Carina's comment on that front was that she hadn't trusted him, not like Chuck (or Casey for that matter), he was an easily played diversion and sex toy, the only thing she felt bad about was when she interfered with what he had with Alex, but in hindsight Alex probably would have been better off if she'd broken them up. When Sarah thanked her for taking that time with Alex, she shrugged it off, saying that the girls had to stick together, but her eyes said otherwise.

After a bit she looked at Carina and asked her to stay there, she just had to sort something out, with that she headed through Chuck's office, grabbing him along the way, to Casey's office. Once they were in and the door was shut, she started her pitch with "What do you guys think about Carina joining us?" Casey was initially shocked and outraged, as expected, Chuck appeared to be considering the question seriously. She explained what Carina had said about quitting the DEA (leaving out what she'd said about Chuck, though she wouldn't be surprised if Chuck had heard, he didn't eavesdrop, per say, but he was very protective her, so he tried to be aware of anything which may upset her), and pointed out that they knew how capable she was. At Casey's comment of "Yeah, she's capable of being a pain in my ass!" she looked at him until he held up his hands in surrender and she continued. Sarah went over Carina's skills and capabilities (other than seduction, which was off the table now, anyway), pointing out that they were ones that they needed in CI, especially if her own activities would be curtailed from here on, Alex was shaping up well (as they all expected), but with her off the roster, Casey didn't have an experienced operative to back him up, and that wasn't good enough. When Chuck started to say something on that, she cut him off, telling him (and Casey) that if she was out of field work, so was he. There was no way that she was going to let him do field work unless she was there to make sure he was safe! (At that she gave Casey a "no offence" look, and he nodded, understanding that she wasn't questioning his ability or commitment to look after Chuck, but she just wouldn't accept anyone but her for that role.) Sarah ended that discussion by conceding that WE could support them if a bigger team was needed, but Casey needed someone capable of watching his back when WE weren't there. They discussed it for a while longer and agreed that Carina would be a good addition to the "family" if she agreed to join them. Casey's agreement was only slightly grudging, but he did still held a grudge for being caught out twice by Carina, and for Sarah keeping that picture she took.

At that, Sarah opened the door and waved for Carina, who she knew was watching Casey's office and had a pretty good idea of what they were talking about, to come over. Carina came over and looked around the room before settling down into an available seat and raising her eyebrow at them. Sarah opened her mouth to speak but Chuck put his hand on her arm, she looked at him and nodded when he obviously wanted to handle it. Chuck started into a spiel and then suddenly stopped, thinking for a few bit before he just came out and said that Sarah had told them that she'd left the DEA and they'd like, they'd ALL like (looking at Casey) her to join them at CI, if that was something she'd like? She looked at him, then Sarah, and Casey, and then smiled and said she'd like that very much. They spent the next hour or so going over what her duties would be and what areas she'd need to expand into with them, by the end of the discussion everyone was in agreement, and Carina was part of the family. At that point, Chuck closed the door and Carina was filled in on the details that Alex and Jeff weren't privy to as yet, about the nature of the contracts that they had with the government (and in particular General Beckman). Also that Stephen Bartowski was alive, they had rescued him from an Intersect facility in Russia, and had destroyed the facility and everything in it (at that, she saw a stricken look on Chuck's face and she made a note to ask Sarah for more detail on that in private), and Stephen was now Stefan Kowalski, and changes had been made to his face, voice and other things to allow him to stay hidden from the government and other organisations who believed that he still may be alive and were hunting him. She was also advised that the ONLY other people who knew about that were Ellie and General Beckman. By the end of it, Carina was wide eyed, but felt that she WAS part of the family. Of course, that wasn't enough to stop her winding Casey up about it being "you and me" again, but before she started on Chuck, Sarah reminded her that she was still quite capable of killing her if she tried to interfere with HER man, she agreed to have and to hold, NOT to share, which just got a grin from Carina.

Getting Carina's clearances re-instated and upgraded to the CI prime team levels was a simple matter, and the General was glad to hear that they'd acquired another person of her calibre for the team. When she had a teleconference with them, one thing she asked was whether Carina had been brought up to speed on the CI intel and correctly accepted the unqualified "yes" she got as the fact that Carina was across everything, including those parts that she, herself, and Ellie were the only ones outside of that room who knew.

It wasn't hard to integrate Carina into the group, everyone knew her except for Chuck's father, and she wasn't on the outs with anyone, the talk she had with Alex had made them friends rather than just a couple of Morgan ex's. Sarah did have a serious discussion about not including Chuck in any of her games, as she wasn't in a forgiving mood at the moment, and asked her to go easy on Casey and Jeff as well. Sarah also roped Carina into Stefan's language acclimatisation, as she spoke Polish, Hungarian and related languages and had lived in the region for long enough to fill in some of the cultural details for him. Carina found it was quite fun to be chatting with Chuck's dad about Chuck and Ellie. Another benefit of bringing Carina into the fold was that she, like Casey and Sarah, had her own collection of safe houses, to make the pool that much bigger and keep Stefan a little further under the radar as they moved him around.

Carina got herself a chic apartment close to the CI offices and settled down to picking up the more cerebral aspects of the work at CI, as well as doing the field work with Casey and/or Alex. She had no trouble adjusting her wardrobe to stylish business focus rather than sexpot, but did find it difficult to go back and pick up her never used law degree and pass the bar for corporate law purposes. Sarah had fun with that, as she had so rarely found anything that could make Carina squirm, and was more amused than surprised when Carina did start representing them, she won nearly every case.

Sarah was still pissed off when she and Chuck had to provide backup to Casey and Carina and watch as the others did the jobs that were her's and Chuck's not that long ago, it was the action and being the primary team that she missed. She stopped herself by remembering what Casey had said, he'd been right, and for now at least she WAS on light duties for medical reasons, so she needed to start using her head, she knew Chuck and the other people she was prepared to listen to for good advice were right, her primary asset was her head and planning and analysis was needed to successfully complete their contracts/missions/operations, whatever you wanted to call them. She was a mess, logically she knew that she was more, not less, than she'd been before, but she left so damn useless a lot of the time at the moment, just because she couldn't get into the action?

There had been one potential benefit from this, the hours she spent on the range had finally corrected her previous weakness, her left hand had always been a lot weaker than the right when shooting. The frustrations of recent months had her in the range so much that there was no discernible differences between her shooting hands now, and what was scarier was the speed and accuracy she showed when shooting simultaneously with a gun in each hand. Given that Chuck joined her in the range almost every time meant that he had improved almost as much. What got her through all this, though, was Chuck, his touch, his kiss, or even just his presence was enough to take the edge off and bring her down when she was getting herself worked up. His secret weapon in this battle, though, was spooning, nothing made her feel better and took her cares away than when they were in bed together, him behind her with his arms around her, hands holding her belly.

Anyway, Carina had come back into their professional and personal lives in a big way, the relationship with some (mainly Casey) remained stormy, for want of a better word, but with others, such as Alex, Carina had shown another side of herself, a softer side that hadn't been really seen for a long, long time. The bitch was back, but in general she was a force for good now.


	14. True love

**Have you noticed that writing off the top of your head gets less fun after 25-30,000 words?**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters..**

As they got closer to Sarah's due date, Sarah and Chuck tended to work from home most of the time, not that much of an issue when nearly everything they were doing was on-line. One of the others did regular runs to the house to drop off mail or paperwork, and spend time with them. Carina actually did many of the mail runs as she was having fun with Sarah's hand me down Lotus, and wanted to spend time with Sarah, now that she was back. (Chuck, knowing his wife and how she'd react to any expectation of her driving a soccer mom type minivan or SUV of any form, had pulled in more than a few favours to get a "family car" imported that suited her style and speed requirements, one of the handful of Jaguar F-Type Shooting Brakes that were actually made, along with an XFR-S Sportbrake for himself, he had no problem with the less stylish machine being his because his beautiful wife had more style than, well, anyone.)

Sarah was NOT enjoying the reduced mobility or other issues associated with the advanced stage of her pregnancy, and was taking some of that frustration out on the man who had done this to her. Of course, she'd feel guilty and remorseful as soon as she'd done that and there'd be time out to apologise and cuddle immediately following the outburst. That being said, they were both still getting through of most of their workloads, as Sarah would not accept any of HER work being put onto anyone else, as long as she could do it. She did have her mother and Molly with her quite a bit, something that Chuck was extremely grateful for. Emma saw how much effort Chuck was putting into trying to make sure that Sarah had everything she wanted and thought again about how happy she was that her daughter had found this man, he was one in a million. (Well, he was a lot more unique than that, but his mother in law didn't know about those other aspects of her remarkable son in law, she just saw the man who'd do anything to make her daughter happy.)

The language practice that Sarah, Chuck, Carina, and even Casey had been having with Stefan was working well, he was quite convincing with his accent and phrasing, with enough regional familiarity to hold up in conversation with most people. He'd also been working hard on his speech therapy and physiotherapy, so his voice and movements/mannerisms were also significantly changed. Sarah, Chuck, Casey and Ellie had all spent time with him and their consensus was that he could pull it off, as long as he didn't let anything trip him up. Therefore, Stefan was also in town, staying with Carina at her apartment, in case Sarah and Chuck's baby came early. When Sarah had contacted him a few months ago with the proposal that they work on his new identity so that he could be there for the baby's birth, he was touched and excited, and had fully committed to putting the effort into making this work, he was still doing all the exercises, and would continue to do so as long as it took. So yeah, as long as he didn't get tripped up (when he saw Mary, for example), they all thought he could pull it off. Stefan was still remoting into Carmichael Industries to do his work, the story line would be that they flew him in when Sarah was due, as they'd become close when she and Chuck engaged Stefan for the CI (true enough, she'd spent a lot of time getting to know her father in law properly after they rescued him), to explain how the remote CI member was there all of a sudden. Carina's jokes about keeping him company while he was staying with her almost got her skewered by her best friend, the pregnancy had not affected her speed or aim with a knife, though it had affected her sense of humour.

Chuck also tracked down Sarah's father, put him up in a hotel and made sure that he'd stay in town until Sarah had the baby. Jack could see that Chuck was deadly serious about the repercussions that would follow if he skipped out on Sarah THIS time, and he'd seen enough of his son in law by now to know that if Chuck came hunting him for leaving, he would find him, and he didn't think he'd like what happened then. As a side note, with a similar inflection, Chuck told him not to upset Emma, Sarah needed her on her game at the moment, so doing anything to detract from that would make them all unhappy, maybe even angry. The look in Chuck's eyes now showed that something had changed in him, and there would be no glib talking his way out of things if he disappointed his daughter again, new Chuck was actually quite a scary guy.

As well as both fathers being in town, Ellie flew over and was staying with Chuck and Sarah until the baby was born, primarily to be there for her, them, through the time around the birth, and the actual birth, but also having a very competent doctor on hand at all times would perhaps help her little brother curtail the expected panicking about his wife and the baby (which would help Sarah no end). Carina had Zondra on speed dial to call as soon as there was any indication that the baby was close. They would tell Mary when the baby was coming, but were sort of hoping that she couldn't make it, due to the other complications, Devon was in the same boat, Ellie wanted Clara there, but the recent issues with Devon meant that none of them wanted him around Chuck and Sarah, including Ellie. So they (mainly Chuck) had done everything possible to ensure that the people that Sarah wanted or needed to be there when the baby was born would be.

While everything was getting closer to the birth, Casey was handling all meetings and contacts for CI, and running the office and operations, with Carina, Alex and Jeff as his team. It didn't help when he went to see Sarah one night and she saw the bulge of a bandage under his sleeve, so he had to explain that he got clipped while trying to keep Alex and Jeff under cover. She was slightly mollified when the answer to her question about where Carina was while this was happening came back as. "She was taking out the guys who were shooting at us." When she asked about Alex, Jeff and Carina, Casey just said "fine". Sarah looked at him until he sat down to tell her what, actually, happened. They'd been engaged for what was, on the face of it, a relatively simple job, extract stolen information from systems in a given facility. Casey and Carina were the prime entry team, with Alex as trainee/support and Jeff as technical support. Things were going well at the start, they neutralised the alarm systems and locking mechanisms, got into the facility and headed for the data centre, but they hadn't done quite enough homework on the security systems or personnel. The facility employed multi-layered systems under defence in depth principles, and they triggered at least one of the systems in the inner, more secure areas. Once the system was triggered, the security force that was deployed was at least 2-3 times the size that their information had indicated, and the simple exercise quickly escalated into a fire-fight. Casey was looking after the support personnel while Carina manoeuvred her way to a point where she could take out the security personnel and get the pressure off Casey and the others. They managed to extract the information that they went in to get, but they didn't have the right people involved for the planning phase, or cracking the systems. They should have run the planning past Sarah or Chuck, as they probably would have been able to identify the holes in the plan and had Chuck or Stefan involved in the cracking the systems. The prime issue was underestimating the target environment, and Casey was quite prepared to admit that that was on him, they got out of it successfully, and with nothing but a bullet graze, but it could have been much worse.

Casey's injury brought to mind the operations leading up to Ellie having Clara, Casey was in hospital due to things not going to plan when she threw him out the window, nine storeys up, Chuck was off running the operation to take Volkoff down, so he could get their mother back, and they both turned up by military helicopter just in time for the birth. In comparison to that, her husband had dragged nearly everyone to town at least a month ahead of her due date, and essentially told them to stay there, to make sure she had them there. She smiled as she looked at the picture of them nearby (everywhere in the house their pictures were nearby), and pressed the page button on the phone beside her, about 20 seconds later she had him in front of her asking what she needed, she just smiled up at him, said "You", and pulled him down for a kiss.

As the indications of the impending birth started coming quicker, Zondra was called, and flown in by supersonic military jet, then as it got closer still, Mary (as one of the grandmothers) was notified, and finally Devon was told, close enough to the expected birth that there was pretty much no chance of him making it. Ellie was a bit upset that Clara wasn't there, but she was too young to recognise what was happening, anyway. The plan to notify Mary at close to the last minute to keep her away wasn't quite enough, though, as she hitched a ride on a supersonic jet, as well, and got there in time.

When the night did come (why do babies NEVER decide to come at a convenient time?), Chuck was in the delivery room room, wondering how he could be so lucky and trying to comfort his incredibly wonderful wife as she alternately threatened him and told him now wonderful he was and apologised for calling him what she did. The delivery personal laughed at the creative threats she was making to him, without realising that, actually, they would not be remotely difficult for her. Emma was in the delivery room with them as well, and the rest of the tribe filled the waiting room down the hall, after giving their best wishes to the parents to be.

Most of the friends and family were in clumps, looking down the hall towards the delivery room and talking nervously, while Mary stood off to one side, scanning the group. Mary knew most of the people in the room quite well, but found her eyes being repeatedly drawn back to the group who actually worked at CI, she knew Casey alright, and had met his daughter, Alex, Jeff, the older one who'd been at Buy More when Chuck was there, and that red headed skank who was friends with her daughter in law, but not the older Polish man, Stefan. That was why she couldn't understand why he was the one who kept drawing her eye back to that group. Casey and Carina were generally talking to him in Polish as supposedly his English wasn't the best, and his accent and knowledge of the area he was reportedly from seemed to comply with necessary parameters well enough to be credible (as she'd positioned herself close enough to eavesdrop on them, and she'd had a discussion with him earlier). He was reportedly a tech wiz, the next best they had after Chuck (though supposedly that Jeff character was also rather good, something she couldn't comprehend after she'd watched him in a perpetually drunken state as he letched on every woman who walked into the Buy More when she was casing the place to arrange a meet with Chuck, but he did look like a different man now, so who knows?), and this, too, was borne out by their discussions but she couldn't understand why her eyes kept getting drawn back to him, or why there was something familiar about him. He seemed excited about the birth and looked rather nervous, he did the same thing Chuck did with that little... Three and half hours into the wait for the baby, Mary's eyes suddenly widened and the look on her face had the doctors Woodcomb and others running to her, as it looked as though she was having a heart attack (it pretty damned near felt like she was when it happened, too).

After she'd convinced everyone she was OK and they left her, she focussed on Stefan, taking in every word, every movement, so much so that she totally missed the looks and discussion going on between Casey and Carina, or the fact that they were freeing up their weapons. After another half hour or this, Mary started towards Stefan with a determined expression on her face, pushing anyone who stood between him and her out of the way. When she stood in front of him she looked up into his eyes with a bewildered look on her face and whispered "Stephen?" in a choked voice, when he smiled at her with their special smile and said "Hello Mary", she threw herself at him, latching onto his neck and started babbling incoherently (well, incoherently to most, Stefan seemed to understand but then he'd spent the last 20 years living on the ragged edge between sanity and chaos). Casey swore and he and Carina dragged the two of them into an empty room and closed the door before others noticed. As they continued their crazy catch-up, Casey let Chuck know what happened via his earpiece and then stood there, muttering about all the damn Bartowskis being the same as he was forced to watch the pair of loons making out, Carina just stood there and grinned, partly at them, but mainly about how uncomfortable it was making Casey (and they both kept their hands near their weapons in case this wasn't the joyful reunion it appeared to be).

Inside the delivery room, Sarah looked at Chuck when he got the message, he just looked her in the eye and said "Mom", she pushed his hand towards the door but he shook his head, leant over to kiss her and told her that they had it covered. In the other room, things wound down to something approaching sanity over the next 45 minutes or so, and Mary's face turned hard as she looked around them and asked why they kept this from her, Stefan couldn't form an answer so Casey stepped forward to explain that they (implying he) didn't know where her loyalties lie, so they (he) didn't know if she'd turn Orion over to the government if she found out, adding that they'd stop her if she tried that now. She advanced on him with a face that most (including most in the spy game) would have run from, but Casey didn't blink, squaring off against her. She just looked up at him, totally unperturbed about the fact that he was over twice her size and was still rated as one of the most lethal men on the planet in most areas, and said. "You thought that I'd turn my husband, the man that I love (and son as he had to have organised this) over to the government after being forced to be away from him for over 20 years?" Casey shrugged, saying that she hadn't given any indication of being a distraught wife and mother when she heard that he'd come back from the dead, then been killed again, for good this time, and she hadn't given any indication that she was anything but a spy since her son (and daughter in law) brought her back in from the cold when they took down Volkoff Industries and Alexei Volkoff, so all the evidence they had in front of them them was saying that she was nothing but a spy. When Sarah was separated from Chuck she tore the world apart to find him and get him back (Carina looked at Casey, that was part of their story that she didn't know about, and would have to find out), but when it was found that Orion had returned from the dead, she did nothing, and when she was told that he'd been destroyed with the Russian Intersect facility, she did nothing. They'd seen what a great spy in love could and did do when the love of their life was in danger, they hadn't seen anything of that nature from her and therefore it was deemed too much of a risk to Stephen or the family to let her know anything. She looked at him the first tears in her eyes for the first time in over 20 years (as far as anyone knew), a broken woman, she turned to her husband, hesitant, asking whether he believed that she was nothing but a spy, too? He tried to speak (all Stephen Bartowski again), trying to explain that he didn't want to believe that, but they'd pointed out to him the same things that Casey had just said to her, and that they just didn't have any evidence that the family (or him) would be safe if they let her know. Mary ran into his arms and broke down, sobbing, this was the woman that they'd been looking for before, but her spy mask had been impenetrable then. Casey looked at the pair, sobbing in each other's arms and called Chuck on the earpiece again, telling him that his parents were together, and that they'd be OK. Chuck thanked him with a grin and looked at Sarah, nodding, so she pulled him in for a kiss with delight, before the next contraction hit her.

**A/N Yeah, thought I'd throw Mary a bone and let her back in, what can I say, I'm a hopeful romantic.**


	15. Spy Kids

**Why do so many of us have the image of them having twins seared into our heads, I wonder?**

**The reference to stupid fathers actually came mostly from one the more recent births in my family (except the actual punching part, though I'm sure she thought about it), doubt that any of us will forget that one in quite a while.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters, blah, blah, blah.**

As was common for first births, the labour was long and drawn out, the first baby took over 13 hours, and the second was another hour and a half later, Sarah was wrung out, and Chuck was a tad battered, but at least part of it was his own fault. (In the middle of their daughter being born, he'd complained that she was squeezing his hand too hard as he'd damaged it recently, to which her response was "Are you kidding me?" and punched him out, without letting go of his hand.) So he had no-one to blame but himself to blame for the new black eye he was beginning to show once both babies were born. Both babies were healthy and perfect, both daughter and son blonde, blued eyed angels like their mother (at least, when they were asleep, which still matched their mother).

The entire "tribe" came in to see the mother and children once they were settled, but one of the things that meant the most to the proud parents was that all 4 grandparents were there to see them, and Chuck or Ellie never thought that they'd see their parents together again (even if their father was unrecognisable by any normal means), and Sarah had had little hope of seeing her parents in the same room, either. Once everyone had seen the twins and most had left, a strange group settled into Sarah's room for a discussion on futures.

The group, made up of Stefan, Mary, Chuck, Sarah, Casey, Carina, Ellie and General Beckman, closed the door and sat down to discuss the on-going plans regarding Stefan and Mary. One thing that had now been confirmed that Stefan's persona was strong enough to hold up to scrutiny, the fact that it took their mother 3 ½ to 4 hours of looking at and listening to their father to find enough pointers to be relatively sure that he was her husband, where the biggest tip-offs were some random nervous mannerisms that Chuck shared with him was a reasonable indication that he was safe from being identified by any normal detection mechanisms, and therefore he should be able to start a more "normal" life if he was careful about it. At one point Chuck looked up from his daughter in his arms and snorted, Sarah (holding their son) and everyone else looked up and asked what he was laughing about? Chuck waved his other hand around the room and pointed out that they they were sitting in a hospital with their newborn children, the head of the NSA, one of the top people in the CIA, the person at the top of the unofficial international most wanted list, assorted high level operatives and family members, calmly discussing how to thwart the world's most powerful government and other organisations' attempts to locate the person who could build what was probably one of the most devastating things that had ever been devised, then asked if he was the only one who found that bizarre and amusing? They all looked at each other and agreed, laughing (quietly, to avoid waking the babies). The point, though, was that the setting and the reason for them for being there was what it made it the safest place to have that meeting (with Chuck's white noise generators and signal jammers), they were there in a public hospital facility with friends and family for the birth of Chuck and Sarah's children. It was the only circumstances whereby a group like that could get together without warranting attention from the very organisations that they were trying to avoid.

With that, they settled back into the discussion, Chuck would create all the "paper trails" to show that Stefan had moved to the USA, and particularly LA, to work with Carmichael Industries full time, showing a history of his consulting to the firm, Chuck looked at the General, saying that assistance with approvals would be appreciated, and she just nodded. Mary then announced her intention to retire, citing her two new grandchildren as the reason to leave work and move across the country to be near them, it was decided that the best approach would be to wait 6-12 months before Stefan actually lived with her full time, it could be framed as an autumn years relationship that developed with someone working for her son's company, and obviously they met through Chuck. Chuck pointed out that it'd probably help things if his mother was consulting with Carmichael Industries as well, that would provide her with income, let her stay active like Stefan, and help with the cover story of an office romance. As Chuck had created ironclad credentials for Stefan and they'd all been vetted and accepted by the American government (partly with General Beckman's assistance, but they did stand up to any scrutiny), any background checks on his mother's new boyfriend, once she was retired, would hold up fine. When Ellie also advised that she'd be moving back to LA to be near her family, Sarah raised the question of Devon. Ellie said that, once he'd properly apologised to you two (nodding to Chuck and Sarah), he may be coming with her and Clara after she'd arranged for a suitable position (or two) with a hospital or institute nearby (the General interceded to say that she'd help with that if she wanted), but if he didn't go along with her plans, she'd be coming back with Clara anyway. Casey and Carina would provide the primary operational security for Stefan and the others, as they were the prime active "field agents" of Carmichael Industries now. Sarah reached over to squeeze Chuck's hand at that point and added that they would also be the twins' god parents, as they were good role models (adding most of the time, while looking straight at Carina), and would always keep them safe. Casey and Carina lit up at that, and everyone else nodded, smiling.

Once the gang left, Chuck and Sarah settled down for some quality time with the twins, Sarah and the twins were only staying in hospital for a couple of days, to make sure everything was fine, then they'd be going home. Ellie and Emma would be there at home to support them and look after them.

Ellie was going to be staying with them for the first month, at least, so they'd be looked after as well as they'd be in hospital. The only change in the earlier plans was that Ellie would be starting the hunt (with General Beckman's help) for suitable positions in nearby hospitals or institutes, and for a suitable house nearby (with CI assistance). When she got home to Chuck and Sarah's from the hospital after the twins were born, she called Devon to let him know what she and Clara would be doing, and why, and tell him that he had until the end of the week to let her know whether he'd be joining them. When he started threatening to take her to court and saying that he'd get sole custody of Clara so she wouldn't see her, she just quietly reminded him which of them had the high level government support and the funds of a brother's highly successful company with millions available at any time to contest the issue, and advised him not to try to threaten her with that, or to try to run with Clara, either, as they'd be tracked down. When she got off the phone she was crying, but she she was determined that she and her daughter would be with her family, and would be happy. If her husband didn't come, then his awful family would not be able to taint her daughter, which would be so good for Clara.

Things had been rather strained between them since he told her about his phone call to Chuck, and she'd slapped him and then flew over to sort out things with her brother and sister in law. When she got back things only got worse as he'd been a petulant child, sulking because she took Chuck's side over his, so she'd taken to sleeping in the guest room much of the time because his answer to the issues was sex, on his terms, which was why it had been easy to make the decision to come over to look after Sarah for at least a month before and a month after the babies were born, the main thing that hurt her was being away from Clara. Devon's behaviour made her think back over the way he'd behaved for the time that they'd been together, which in turn made her ask herself what she'd been thinking, yes, the sex had been great, but that was the only real benefit of their relationship or marriage. Outside of the operating theatre, Devon was just an overgrown frat boy, continuously trying to relive his fraternity glory days with his frat brothers, who weren't growing up either. What sort of environment was that to be raising their daughter in, around a group of aging frat boys who regard women as nothing more than something to be used? He was insensitive, self centred, and bombastic, and for that matter, his constant stupid comments and innuendo grated on her almost as much as they did Chuck. As she was thinking back on that, she realised that she'd felt this way quite often, so why had she stuck it out?

Ellie took a few breaks from beating herself up about her dodgy choices to go out with Alex, and/or her old girlfriends from before she moved away. When she went out with the girls she had fun and stopped worrying about her life choices, just drinking, dancing and flirting, never really playing up or going home with anyone but the girls, it was such a relief from the rut she'd been in for the past few years. Devon called back at the end of the week and said that he'd move back on his terms and started to dictate his terms. He was shocked when she just said "No". When he finally shut up, she told him the terms that he'd move back with them under, starting with the fact that he would make a genuine apology to both Chuck and Sarah, and going on to cover the things that he'd be required to do, and not do. When she finished the short list of requirements, he once again went ballistic and started threatening, so she just told him she'd be back in a few days to collect her things and Clara, as she already had a good job lined up and they'd bought a house for her, which she'd have possession of within the month. When she turned up, as expected, the entire Woodcomb family and some of his friends were were there, in an attempt to intimidate her, but they weren't expecting her to turn up with General Beckman's protection detail of large men, an NSA moving team, and the necessary warrants to deal with any police they may call. She just walked in with the protection detail and the head of the moving team, picked up Clara, identified the things that the moving team were to take, and left. She cried most of the way back to LA, but she was sure that she'd made the right choice for herself and Clara.

Just as with Casey and Alex's house, having a large budget and being able to pay cash for a house made it easy to find a suitable one for Ellie and get ownership quickly, her father searched the target area and tagged any that matched the criteria, then Alex and Carina pre-screened the tagged houses before bringing Ellie out to make a call on which ones she liked, it only took a few days to select one that she liked, and arrange the sale. So, Ellie and Clara were staying with Chuck and Sarah for a few weeks more, then moving once the painting and alterations she wanted were done on their own place.

Ellie and Clara wouldn't be in the house alone for long, they'd chosen one that was big enough to share with her parents, without them getting in each other's way. The plan was that her mother would move in with her once she retired and moved back from Langley, along with her father however much time he spent there as they "started their relationship", and depending on how things went, they may move out to a place of their own after 6-12 month, or may not. The house was big enough and laid out well enough that IF Devon came crawling back and IF she decided to take him back, it would be workable for both couples to live there.

So, the Bartowski family was coming back together, three generations close enough to get re-acquainted and support each other, plus Sarah's mother and the rest of the tribe. Chuck and Sarah were learning how to live without sleep, but they had the entire extended family around to assist them, Ellie, both grandmothers, Alex, and even Carina, add in Casey, Jeff and the grandfathers at times and the twins were a bit spoilt for attention.

One thing was for sure, they wouldn't have normal lives, nothing was normal went both parents were super-spies, the grandparents on one side were a spy and a spy/mad scientist, on the other a con-man and ex con-mans' wife, their aunt on one side was a top neurosurgeon and researcher, their "aunt" on the other side was the heiress to a fortune who'd been rescued as a baby and hidden from the people who wiped out her family to get their hands on her to use her to access that fortune, and most of the rest of the people around them were spy related as well.


	16. Family Ties

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters etc...**

When they got the twins home, things settled down a little. Most of the family thought that the names picked for them sounded rather old fashioned, but nice, Sarah and Chuck had dug up old family names that meant something to them, so Yvonne Mekenna Bartowski and Zachary Adam Bartowski were chosen. When they were sleeping, it was hard for Sarah and Chuck to drag themselves away from watching them, they just looked like little angels. It was a tad easier to step away when it was changing, burping or feeding time, but that still wasn't enough for their parents to want to be out of arm's reach of their precious children. Emma and Ellie watched them, contentedly wrapped around each other as they stood looking at the twins, and smiled to each other, they knew that the constant freaking out through the pregnancy would come to this, they'd been through it themselves, but it was still heart warming to watch it happen.

When Casey, Alex and Jeff got home from the hospital after the twins were born, Alex and Jeff confronted Casey and asked "Stefan is Stephen Bartowski, isn't he?". Casey looked at them for a minute and then nodded, saying that they had to keep the secret as Stephen was still at the top of the international most wanted list, not because of anything he'd done, but because of what organisations around the world wanted him to build. He knew he didn't have to say that, they'd stayed quiet in front of everyone else and only raised it when they were by themselves in their house which was constantly scanned for bugs, but it was worth repeating, often, to re-iterate the point for all of them. When Alex asked how they'd manage to change Stephen that much, Casey looked off into the distance as he said "Lots of surgery, therapy and practice.", thinking about the pain and suffering that Stephen had to go through to get to this point.

Given that Chuck and Sarah were still not leaving the house much, Casey and the others were still covering nearly all of the running around for Carmichael Industries, though after the screwed up operation that got him shot (well, grazed), Casey was making sure that he engaged their experts in each area on all other operations. He was used to being shot, but he definitely didn't want his daughter to get used to it, that wasn't how this business was supposed to operate any more. Carina was still doing the majority of the mail runs to the house, as she wanted to see her soon to be godchildren, as well as Sarah (she knew better than to say she wanted to see Chuck, Sarah's adverse reaction to that sort of thing pre-dated any pregnancy hormonal issues).

Now that he was "out" within the CI family, Stefan was in the office and participating in the sessions and trainings there, given that there was even more point for Stefan to attend the defense training than Jeff, the very real threat of being grabbed still hung over his head, and always would. They stuck to the requirement to speak Polish much of the time, as "Stefan" had to be as airtight as they could make the identity. Within a month, Mary was on hand as well, she'd retired and moved over to live with Ellie and Clara. When she arrived, Chuck sat his parents down, together, (without Sarah's or Casey's knowledge) and explained what their expectations were for them, how they were to behave in regard to the business and everyone working there, who the bosses were (Sarah, Casey, him), who the designated controls were for each area etc, basically giving them a chance to agree to the requirements or leave. Mary and Stefan agreed to all requirements and looked at each other with a smile, they'd both been on the receiving end of his wrath for not giving Sarah the respect she deserved before, but this was different, he was laying out the chain of command and operational requirements for the organisation and telling them that they would obey these, or they could leave now. Their son wasn't a boy any more, he was a man in control. Mary knew that this was directed at her, more than Steph... Stefan, as she'd tended to try and steamroller over Chuck and Sarah when she came back, but she could see that she'd been wrong in that, she wasn't a match for either of them.

CI was also becoming more of a family business, in that Mary was bringing Clara into the office to look after her when Ellie was at the institute, and once they both started coming into the office again, Chuck and Sarah would be bringing Yvonne and Zack, they were setting up one of the offices to be a nursery/creche, but generally the kids would be in the offices with them.

Within 2 months, the family was generally at work, they would often go in Sarah's Shooting Brake, as she quite enjoyed driving her "Mommy Mobile" (her husband did know what she liked). It was a bit harder to get the bassinets in and out of the back of the Shooting Brake than the back seat of Chuck's Sportbrake, but it wasn't that much of an issue. Even that early, Sarah was most of the way back to the shape she was before the later stages of the pregnancy, as she'd gone into her exercise regime within the first week of going home from the hospital, her breasts did get in the way a little though, as they were still larger while she was breast feeding the twins. They'd often each have one of the babies beside their desk, so they could watch over them as they worked. Some clients commented about it being unprofessional to have babies in the office, until word got around how quickly CI severed any connection with you if you were stupid enough to say that.

Once everyone was back in the office, CI was in full operational mode, with greater capacity to handle work with Mary on board as well. Mary could support the operations and logistics sides well, but she lagged behind the others in technology, so she was being tutored by both Stefan and Jeff (to free up Stefan when he was needed for serious work) on that. The fact that everyone in CI was now read into the Stefan/Stephen matter made it easier and safer, in that they all knew that it was the "family secret" and therefore were less likely to get tripped up and let something slip. Another hole that was realised was that of languages, Sarah, Casey, Chuck, Carina and Mary could all handle multiple languages well. Stefan was now bi-lingual, but Alex and Jeff could only speak English and that was a limitation with the global operations that were the focus of CI, so another task added to the training schedules was for Chuck, Sarah, Carina, Casey and Mary to get Stefan, Alex and Jeff up to speed on at least half a dozen languages each. A lot of that fell to Chuck, Sarah and Carina as they had better language skills and more patience, but Casey and Mary had to support the language exercises after hours to help bed them in (and Ellie joined in at their household (and in the office sometimes) to stretch herself and get her mind off other things). So, they were busy, building the business, and expanding themselves to handle new challenges, because one thing they knew in this business, even if they had stepped back from the bleeding edge, was that there would always be challenges.

They weren't that surprised when the General engaged them to look into a resurgence of the Ring. The money offered was too good to refuse, so over all their misgivings they accepted the contract. Chuck and Stefan handled the data search, of course, while Casey, Carina and Mary geared up for the physical side. Sarah, Jeff and Alex kept working on their other projects, to honour their undertakings to their existing clients. The question of whether Sarah or Chuck would be involved in the physical side of the new operation didn't even come up, it just wasn't happening. Casey had already made arrangements with the General to bring in specific strike teams (his old teams) to provide the muscle for any incursions required.

Chuck and Stefan tracked the pointers on the new ring info, then ran the same scans and searches that Chuck had run for the Russian Intersect facility that his father had been taken to, they'd been putting as much effort into the search as he did when he was trying to find his father. Sarah knew something was wrong when Chuck started swearing, quietly to avoid waking Yvonne, but continuously. Chuck didn't swear, well he did, but only under serious provocation, so it took a lot for him to go off like this. She went through to his office, gently put her hand on his shoulder and asked him what had happened. Chuck waved at the screen in front of him as though that should mean something to her. She waited for him to speak and then pointed out that not everyone was a computer genius and asked him, again, what happened. He turned his head to gently kiss the hand on his shoulder before apologising and saying that they were using an air gap system (she looked at him), like the systems that they used at the facility where dad was, to stop him getting signals out, as what stopped signals getting out also stopped signals getting in. They couldn't crack the systems to get the information out of them without getting into the facility, itself. Sarah looked at him and just said "No!"

She dragged him out of his seat and out the front door of his office, closing the door behind them before she started in on him, saying that there was no way that he was going into that facility to get the information from the systems, they had an agreement, they didn't do that unless they both went in, then she broke down crying and he held her, trying to calm her down. The others had come out of their offices when they heard her raised voice, and his father stepped over to them, saying that she was right, he'd go in with the team to extract the information. When Chuck tried to argue he pointed out that his mother was already on the team, so he'd have his partner with him, it was time for Chuck to step back and let someone else step up to do the work for once. He finished, nodding to Sarah crying on Chuck's shoulder. Chuck nodded and kissed her hair.

They mapped out the operation, Stefan would go in with Mary's team, get into the systems to extract the information, they'd mine the facility like they did the intersect facility and wipe everything out when left. Other parts of the team would grab anyone that they could to get information out of. As with the Intersect facility, wiping out the systems and then bringing the building down on top of them would make it almost impossible to identify who was inside when everything went up, so they'd have no way of knowing how much information was leaked. The plans were coming together and looking viable, then Sarah dropped a bombshell when she told Chuck to get rid of the Nighthawk, give it back to the General. Everyone except Sarah, Chuck and Casey was looking at each other, trying to work out what she was talking about, so Casey filled in the blanks for the others. "When the guilt hits him over what happens on these operations, like it did when we rescued his father, he does full speed runs at night on the Nighthawk, using nothing but night vision glasses to see where he's going, it's basically his version of Russian Roulette, he thinks that the pain will go away if he loses that way. He forgets that he has a family which should prevent him thinking that way." Chuck looked at him, startled, as he only then realised what he'd been doing unconsciously. Meanwhile, Casey looked at Sarah, saying "Don't worry, I'll get rid if it." She gave him a little smile and mouthed "Thank you" to him. Chuck went to Sarah to hold her and apologise for what he'd been doing, if they'd confronted him earlier he would have realised it and stopped then.

The operation went off as planned, they extracted all the data in the facility, captured most of the personnel and then wiped out the facility, like the Intersect facility. The captured personnel went to the NSA for interrogation and processing, they took the data back to CI to decrypt and decipher, passing their results and the raw files to the NSA once they were done, to get paid. All in all a very successful operation, they got all the info the NSA wanted, there were minimal deaths for Chuck or anyone else to stress about, and the payment made a sizeable bump in their bottom line.

What was a moderately simple operation for them would have been impossible for anyone else to have achieve, they were the best in the world at what they did.

Obviously the General was happy with the arrangement, she had a pool of legendary people on call with Carmichael Industries, Orion, Frost, Sarah Walker, Charles Carmichael, John Casey and Carina Miller (though most of their special talents or identities weren't known by many others), even their second string employees, Alex and Jeff, were better than most NSA or CIA agents or analysts. With the results that only they could produce, she didn't get arguments from up the chain, in fact she had Presidential authority to engage them at whatever cost she deemed necessary to get them engaged, so she had no trouble making it worth their while to take the contracts she offered.


	17. Not A Normal Life

**Usual Disclaimer, no rights to characters etc...**

Sarah was sitting on the edge of Chuck's desk as she'd just finished feeding and burping the twins, she'd put herself back together and they were settling the twins in preparation to put them back down. She looked at Chuck holding his son and smiled, asking "So, is this life normal enough to make you happy, Chuck?". He looked up at her and grinned "I think I conceded more than a few times that our lives together would never be "normal", and this" (Waving his free hand at her, the twins, the scene outside his office door (Ellie and Alex playing with Clara), and what they had there.) "This is what I'd call the perfect life, so yes, I'm happy, like it says on the house, this'll do me." She looked at him with narrowed eyes for a few seconds before it clicked, after they'd done the extensions to the house, he'd had a brass plaque with "Thislldome" on it mounted beside the front door, when she pointed out that they'd spelt it incorrectly he just grinned and said that it was OK. She gave him a wry grin and said "Well aren't you the clever one then?" He grinned again, saying that he tried, but had to admit he'd seen it on a boat when they were on that last job in Australia, when he'd said the same thing about the spelling to the boat's owner, he'd explained what it meant and it WAS clever, so when they rebuilt the house, he decided to put up the plaque. With that he carefully stood up and leant in to kiss her gently, to avoid jostling the twins.

After they put the twins down and got back to work, he thought about what Sarah said, and their life now was pretty much what he'd told her he wanted, years ago, just a fairytale version of it. The only part that was exactly the same was the incredible woman who'd agreed to marry him, but the wife, kids, getting up to go to the office each day, they were all there, perhaps a little more guns, mayhem and glamour than he was thinking of at the time, but there was far less of the guns and mayhem than there used to be, at least.

A while after that they had a teleconference with the General and some of her peers around the world, at first the people in the teleconference were rather taken aback with the fact that two of the key people that they were there to talk to were cradling babies, and ignoring the matters under discussion at times to pay attention to those babies, but when they came back to the discussion they were all business, addressing each member of the teleconference in their native language (repeating what they said in English for the others) and showing a far greater knowledge of the subject matter and processes than anyone else in the teleconference. How they handled the business at hand put paid to the concerns about the baby issues, and all parties agreed to fund the joint initiative that Carmichael Industries would be overseeing and driving. As they were winding up, curiosity made one party to ask (politely) if they could tell them why they had the babies in the meeting? As he'd asked politely, Chuck answered him, saying that his wife (reaching out to squeeze Sarah's hand) had had the twins less than 3 months ago, and they still needed a lot of care and attention, so while they'd both come back to the office to work, their children were a priority that would not be ignored, for anything. The gentleman thanked Chuck for his explanation with a smile and and complemented him on having such a beautiful family, to which both Chuck and Sarah smiled and thanked him. With that, they finished the call, after Chuck and Sarah waved the twins' hands at the General, saying "Bye, bye Aunty Diane". The smile on her face as she waved back at the twins was something else that her peers had never seen, either.

The joint operation came out of the information that they'd extracted from the new Ring site, the Ring had been quietly but quickly gathering strength since Team Chuck took them down a couple of years ago, and they were already a force to be reckoned with, so the intelligence communities around the world decided to band together and strike back in strength. After providing a clip notes version of their accomplishments, both in government service and as a private organisation, it hadn't taken much convincing to get the heads of the various intelligence organisations to consider engaging Carmichael Industries to run the joint operation, which was the point of the teleconference.

As the majority of the CI input for the operation was information gathering and analysis, direction and oversight, they worked out of their offices. Some of the government people on the operation were relocated to the CI offices to be liaisons between CI and their teams. These people soon learned the importance of manners, and the need to knock AND wait for permission to enter after one of them walked in on Sarah breast feeding and stared at her until she took off half of his ear with a throwing knife. When another one found himself suddenly hoisted into the air and eye to eye with a very large and angry John Casey when he was hitting on Alex, it was reinforced that these "civilians" were nothing to be trifled with.

When the reports of these incidents went back to their superiors, the heads of the various agencies went to General Beckman to ask who these people really were, they'd been put forward as an elite think tank, but they were obviously more than that? Leaving out any mention of Orion and giving them redacted excerpts of their records, she advised who the key players were in the company, and what the relationships within the company were. They were probably equally amazed and amused to find that the famous Agent Charles Carmichael was married to and had children with the equally famous former Agent Sarah Walker, Frost was well known, and she was Agent Carmichael's MOTHER?, Colonel John Casey, the famous Angel of Death, was Alex McHugh's father?, and Agent Carina Miller's professional and personal reputation was quite well known and documented, but she was also a close friend of the former Agent Walker. The only people in that company who weren't infamous in the intelligence community (as far as they knew) appeared to be the Colonel's daughter, the two technical analysts (one of whom was in some sort of relationship with Frost), and Agent Carmichael's sister/Frost's daughter, the neurosurgeon and researcher, who didn't actually directly work there, but was there quite a bit, consulted to CI at times and had the same clearance levels as the direct employees, which inferred that she'd been part of intelligence operations, too. It was a formidable and tight knit group who made up CI, and the heads of the relevant agencies hastily sent back instructions to their people to ensure that that they behaved in the utmost professional and courteous manner, and did not do absolutely anything to provoke any CI people in any way. The woman who headed up the agency who's representative was now missing much of an ear was actually pleased to point out that the woman who's breasts he had been staring at had been one of the most effective and feared assassins in the world, she didn't like these little perverts that she had to deal with much, so making them piss their pants amused her. They also weren't at all sure that Colonel Casey had been joking when he told the man chatting up his daughter that the extra money they paid to get the carpets scotch guarded was worth it, as it made it so much easier to get the blood out.

Aside from the complications added by the government personnel in the CI office, the operation was proceeding well, Chuck, Stefan and Jeff were essentially data mining the Internet to locate any and all pointers to the new Ring activities. Whenever they got a hit that appeared credible, one of them, or Sarah, Casey or Alex would delve deeper on the location where the hit came from. If they saw enough to merit further investigation, the follow up instructions would be sent out to the authorities for the local region. Once the results of the follow up investigation from the region were received, they'd be analysed (and cross checked to verify their authenticity, they got quite a bit of mileage on the issue by identifying operatives who were turned or paid off to tank the investigation, or results, and using that to seed further investigations), and plugged into the overall picture. Slowly (for them, incredibly fast by others' standards) the picture of the new ring was being built, and it was a worrying image for the heads of the world's intelligence community, as it was possibly bigger than it was before team Chuck took it down before.

Chuck and Stefan used previous records on the Ring to identify what had been used to seed the new organisation, this also gave them leads on previously unknown connections to the ring, personnel who hadn't been picked up in the sweeps, facilities and resources that hadn't been identified and captured. The sheer volume of personnel, finances, equipment and facilities which were used to seed the new organisation around the world led to bigger questions about who was behind the new organisation, as the scope said that people very high up had to be still involved. They used the information located to build a model which could project where new Ring resources may be found, and this helped expand the image they had of the new organisation. Each piece of potential information had to be delved into to determine whether they were looking at similar circumstances, or something actually associated with the new organisation, so at any given time, the greyed out (unconfirmed) portion of the image was at least 3-4 times the size of the confirmed portion. Unfortunately, very little of the unconfirmed information was removed, as nearly all of it was verified once they managed to get deep enough into the relevant systems to find the rest of the data.

While Chuck and Stefan were running the cyber side of the operation, Jeff, Sarah and Alex were running a lot of deeper investigations, Sarah and Mary were planning the follow up operations and Casey, Mary and Carina were managing/overseeing the follow up operations, and keeping an eye out for stray communications which may indicate that someone was trying to tip off the targets to what was happening. They were all working long days, and flat out most of the time, so much so that the bathrooms, and the sofa beds in their offices got used quite often. (The primary offices in CI were created as 4 pairs of offices which had shared bathrooms and privacy rooms with beds attached, now allocated to Chuck and Sarah, Mary and Stefan, Casey and Alex and Jeff and Carina, though Carina generally went home as her apartment was quite close, they were well aware of the workload that could be expected at times, so they designed their space up front so that if workload or other issues meant that they had to stay in the CI offices, it would be bearable. There were also kitchen facilities and other bathrooms, and the minor offices and conference rooms had sofa beds as well.) The government personnel in the office weren't directly working with them, and didn't have anything like the same workload, some stayed overnight at times while operations were being conducted around the world, but generally the CI people would be there when they arrived, and still there when they left. Some had come to respect the CI team enough that they took over the minor support and gopher roles for them, to give them the breathing space they needed to do what they were doing. (Most of these people only found out later about the thanks that CI sent through to their superiors for their actions, they WERE thanked in person, but advices were also sent through about what they were doing to support the success of the operation, some of their superiors recognised this in rewards to them afterwards, some, of course, just threw the advices away or penalised them for doing something other than what their direct orders dictated.)

So, bit by bit, they were building an image of the web that the new Ring was building, and it was a frightening image, it WAS bigger than the previous Ring, as there was a large proportion of the Ring resources which weren't identified or captured, and were used to seed the new operation, they hadn't restarted from scratch, they'd just gone into hiding for a while and picked up momentum as they popped up somewhere else. Most of the current heads of the intelligence community recognised the remnants of the previous Ring structure were their responsibility, and that their organisations were still infiltrated by the Ring, and sought advice on how to deal with that. The ones who argued against this were a worry, as this raised the question of whether they were incompetent, or they were actually turned by or part of the new organisation.

Another thing that most of the heads of the intelligence community were concerned about was the fact that CI could access all the information that they did, they accepted that it was necessary to weed out what they needed to track down the Ring, but they realised that to get this information, they had to have gotten through all the controls on their systems, along with everyone else's. The idea that anyone could get through all their controls that easily frightened the ones bright enough to understand it. When they had a teleconference on the matter, General Beckman assured them that the United States of America, and their President, had the utmost faith in the integrity and ethics of Carmichael Industries, and that they had not used any of the information extracted for any purpose other than what they were contracted to do. She also advised them that she could not disclose details of CI's cyber resources, but she could tell them that one of the team used to be well known as "The Piranha" in some circles. Seeing the wide eyed and horrified looks on some of her cohorts' faces when they heard the name of the hacker who many of them had been chasing, but never got close to, she wished them goodbye and terminated the connection before she allowed herself to chuckle at the cat she'd just thrown among the pigeons.


	18. Kill Ring 2

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters...**

Chuck was tired of beating his head against the wall, this operation had been dragging on for nearly 3 months now with limited success (by CI standards) and they kept getting setbacks from the people that they were supposed to be working with and for. By monitoring all communications in and out of their offices, they managed to confirm that 3 of the 12 government liaison positions were filled by people working for the new Ring, they interrogated them and got rid of them, but as this was on top of the earlier incidents and the on-going ogling of the girls and interruptions from most of the personnel allocated, they (CI) sat down to decide what they were going to do. Eventually they came to the agreement that, as they had no other clients or business at that time, they'd move the liaisons out to the conference rooms in the secured foyer area, and revoke their accesses to the internal offices, there were toilet facilities out there, and they could have access to the restricted guest network, without access to the internal network. They'd also found evidence that some of the Agencies were leaking information elsewhere, too, oh joy.

General Beckman and a few of the others realised that they were going to see something new when the teleconference started and the only people on the CI end were Agent Carmichael and Colonel Casey, Mrs Carmichael and the babies, Agent Frost and Agent Miller were not included, and it was obvious to the more intelligent participants that this was because the tone of this meeting would be very different. When the agencies were advised of what was happening, they argued and tried to dictate what actions would be taken, and then they got to see why Agent Carmichael was feared and obeyed in many circles. When Agent Carmichael cut the ranting off with a barked command, he apologised in advance to the women in the meeting and suggested that they may prefer to disconnect, they all declined, as they were pretty sure that they were going to enjoy this. With that, he went into the evidence that they'd found about the turned liaison officers, including video of their interrogations. To reinforce this, he showed satellite images and video of Ring facilities etc being cleared out after the information was provided to the liaison personnel to mount the operations against them. After this he then went on to describe the unacceptable behaviour of many of the liaison personnel in their offices, particularly towards the women of CI (specifically referring to incidents with his wife, Colonel Casey's daughter, Agent Miller, and his sister, and pointing out that his mother was the only one who hadn't been harassed repeatedly), and the delays and obstructions that many of the liaison personnel created by constantly interrupting CI personnel when they were trying to perform the tasks that they needed to perform. When he singled out the (few) liaison personnel who behaved professionally and appropriately and were actually assisting in the exercise, the heads of the other agencies started complaining that he was trying to shut them out, but he again cut through their complaints with a barked command. He then went on to identify the agencies which were leaking the information from the operation, and the specifics of the information leaked, again with satellite images and video to show Ring operations being wound up before anything could be mounted against them (each agency got slightly different figures from CI, so when they found the information being fed into the new Ring, they could identify the source, but he didn't advise them of that), and that those agencies would be removed from the operation immediately. (He could see General Beckman and a couple of others trying to hide the smirks on their faces, as they expected, they were enjoying the show.) Once he'd cut those agencies out of the teleconference and passed the requirement onto the remaining agencies to terminate links with them on any matters involving the current operation, he advised that any other agency feeding information of the operation to them would also be removed from the operation. With that, he advised them of the change of office arrangements that would be occurring immediately, in that the liaisons of the remaining agencies would be moved out of the internal offices into the foyer conference rooms, and internal office access would be revoked for most of them, the only exceptions being the ones singled out previously. He and the Colonel then went on to the regular meeting content, wrapping it up and terminating the teleconference without any further discussion.

They had already set up the desks, computers, communications facilities etc in the "outside" conference rooms the previous night, so as soon as the teleconference was terminated, he initiated the access changes and he, Casey and Carina escorted all the liaisons out of the internal offices to their new offices. Once there they were advised which of them had access to enter the internal offices to bring things to CI personnel (pointing out that these, too, would be revoked of they became part of the problem), and what communications medium they could use to initiate communications with CI, with strict instructions on what circumstances they would permitted to initiate communications under.

When they went back into the internal offices, their relief was so great that Sarah didn't object when Carina hugged and kissed Chuck, as well as Casey. As expected, Chuck got a link initiated from General Beckman about 15 minutes after the teleconference finished, so Sarah came through to be part of the discussion. The General was still chuckling about the reactions, but was quite serious about what she had to say in regard to the fact that the other agencies were up in arms about what Chuck, and to a lesser degree John, had said to them. The heard her out and Sarah responded, advising her that Carmichael Industries would immediately provide formal notice to terminate all involvement in the operation if the agencies were not prepared to agree to CI's operational requirements. She went on to say that CI was prepared to expend every effort in their attempts to successfully complete the operation, but the interference from the agencies, both professional and personal, was impeding their ability to be successful. The General looked at them and asked if she had their permission to share the video of that statement with her colleagues, they agreed and she smiled, asking whether Sarah had prepared that statement previously, Chuck grinned and said "Nope, there was a reason she was Roan's star pupil, my wife is brilliant." They talked for a bit longer, as she asked what her representative had done to be excluded from the list retaining accesses. Sarah looked away so Chuck answered that he'd always been hanging around watching if the girls were sparring or working out in the gym, and kept fabricating reasons to talk to Alex or Carina (once Sarah put him in his place), and also had a habit of demanding that they (all of them) treat his every request as a priority issue. He obviously believed that the special relationship between CI and the General meant that he could barge in and demand anything. The General's expression as she said she'd look into that obviously meant that he'd be replaced, and probably given a rather bad placement somewhere else in the very near future, people who Generals were thinking about with that expression on their face rarely did well.

Over the next week or so, there were a few more adjustments in regard to the liaison personnel, due to their egos being bruised by being summarily dismissed from the offices, a few made derogatory remarks to or about Ellie or the other girls as they went through the foyer area on their way in or out of the office, and the first to see the video of that would go out to have "words" with the individual concerned, if the person on the receiving end had not already done so. Mary made a point of watching the foyer video at all times so she'd be the first out the door when she saw it, there were two primary reasons for this, firstly, Chuck, Sarah and Casey had to deal with the agency heads, so them knocking their personnel about would have looked bad, and secondly, being knocked about by a much smaller, older woman added considerably to the disgrace for these agency jocks. Whoever it was that dealt with them, the individual in question was thrown out the door and all his (or her) accesses were revoked immediately, the respective agency could submit a request to provide a replacement and if so, they'd be interviewed and accepted under probation, or rejected.

With the external personnel out of their hair, they started making headway again, as they complemented each other, even Mary fitted into the dynamic well (initially primarily with Stefan and Casey, but as time progressed she melded with the others as well). The relief from pressure for the girls, and the rest of them (especially Stefan) meant that they were firing again and could freely discuss anything inside the office without worrying about who may overhear them (they received alerts whenever the door opened on all their computers). Changing back into whatever was comfortable for them, rather than dressing for the outsiders in the office also helped get everyone "back in the zone".

Chuck and Stefan did the heavy lifting, as it were, on the computer searches and ran the initial filters over what they found. They then handed the hits off to the others if they looked credible, Jeff, Sarah, Alex or one of the others would look into what they were given and see what else they could dredge up, sometimes handing it back to the "heavy hitters" if things looked significant or the structure looked like they were protecting something. When they dredged up enough to merit a physical incursion, Sarah or Mary would generally do the planning and either hand it off to Casey, Carina or Mary to organise and run the operation with the local authority's manpower, or run it themselves. Once the operations were completed, they'd analyse any information collected from the site, to locate what leads they could to the next piece of the organisation. Sometimes when Ellie came in to spend time with Clara during the day (the institute where she had a position was nearby, one of the criteria for selecting it), she'd be consulted on some of the logic issues they were up against. Ellie was a Bartowski and had a brain as good as Chuck's and Stefan's, and with her different perspective/focus from her brother and father, she could sometimes (often) see something what they couldn't. Without people interfering with them, they were making mileage again, and that got the agency heads to shut up a little, now that they'd been proven to be correct in the measures that they called for.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey had to have further meetings with officials above the agency heads of the agencies that they'd ejected from the operation (sometimes with the heads of state), where they showed the evidence that they found proving that these particular agencies had been compromising the overall operation by feeding information to the target. When they engaged with the country's representatives to resolve the issue, they worked with them to identify and remove the turned elements of the organisation, or replace that particular organisation with another one. Whatever the method, these countries had no alternative, they were experiencing major upheavals. This also delayed the overall operation, but as they'd found the last time, if the entire Ring was to be taken down, it had to be addressed in every country. They couldn't afford to let them go into hiding again, just to come back when they were ready.

So, with things back on track the organisation image was growing more quickly, and unfortunately, so was their knowledge of hooks into governments and other organisations around the world, as the new organisation was VERY well connected (perhaps the old one was, as well, Chuck and the team never had the opportunity to properly investigate the earlier structure, they were on the run with no support at the time, which made their achievement to knock it off its perch all the more amazing). The daily teleconferences with the heads of the intelligence community and other senior defense officials, was getting to be an ever more grim experience, many of them looked grey as they were told how deep the compromise of their infrastructure was, and their task was to ascertain trusted resources to move against them them when they got the order to go. Each day the participants of the teleconference went back to their superiors with additional evidence of traitors, holes in their structures, and secret bases in their countries, so nobody was happy, but everyone's resolve was constantly being strengthened, they would deal with this threat and get control back.

They were 5 months into the operation when the consensus was reached that they had enough information to move on the elements of the organisation around the world and break the back of the organisation enough that they could stop their operations, and they could extract the extra details and mop up the rest of the personnel and structure afterwards. They were still processing information feeds coming in, but their primary focus had now shifted to planning a co-ordinated multi-national strike against all the major points of presence. This planning process took another 2-3 weeks and had them working flat out, identifying and allocating military and paramilitary forces to deal with the expected response at each location, organising available transport to get the forces to the locations without too much chance of detection, organising technical and logistic support to extract the systems and personnel to get the intel to mop up the rest of the organisation once the back was broken with the major strike.

The co-ordinated strike went off largely as planned, they found a few additional leaks that hadn't been identified, so some of the individual strikes required additional resources to succeed, but overall it was a success. Of course, this was the start of greater workload for CI, as all the extracted intel had to be analysed and cross referenced with the previous intel to identify the holes in what they'd had prior to this. For over 3 months, the only ones who left the CI offices much were Ellie (as she came and went as she could with Clara) and Carina (as it was easier for her to duck out to her own apartment for a few hours sleep). The rest of them got rest when they could in the offices, showered, ate, did their laundry there. Chuck and Sarah were worried about the twins always being in the offices and Ellie and Emma had both tried to take them for a while, but as soon as they were taken away from their parents they fussed and couldn't be settled, so they had to bring them back where they needed to be. They compromised a little by taking them out for walks so they could get fresh air on regular basis, and the break also helped their parents clear their heads a little. They didn't like the protection details that always had them in sight whenever they went outside, but accepted that they were targets, at least until this operation was completed, and therefore took the protective services pushed upon them.

3 months after the major strike, the follow up analysis and clean up operations were completed, and the conclusions drawn by CI and the major parties in the operation were that all major individuals, connections and facilities of the new Ring organisation had been captured or destroyed, as had 90-95% of the Ring's personnel and resources. The operation was deemed a success, payment was made to Carmichael Industries (who were shocked by the $65 million bonus that had been added to round it out to $350 million, and the four year tax exemption given to the entire team), along with the personal thanks of the heads of state of the nations that had been involved. With that, they were able to start their lives again, and Chuck and Sarah could start planning the twins' first birthday party, which was only 2 weeks away now.

It was a bit like a dream, getting back to the house, in the past few months it had seemed that their world had become the office and teleconferences with pissed off intelligence, military and political figures. While they had full kitchen facilities in the office, none of them had had the time to cook, so they'd had food delivered all the time. They hardly had time to work out in the gym and were lucky to get any chance to catch any sleep together, let alone have sex (being that close to everyone else in the office that had been out of the question, anyway, especially with Chuck's parents there). After all that, all they really wanted to do was relax and have some quality time with each other, possibly get away for a few days, but they had a birthday party to organise for their children, and hardly any time to do it. The guest list was easy, the family (IE all of CI, plus Ellie and Clara, Emma and Molly, Aunty Dianne and Uncle Roan, and Jack if Chuck had time to track him down and send him a ticket), the venue was even easier, the house had plenty of room, so they organised the birthday cakes and presents and had it ready to go with days to spare, yeah, easy.


	19. Party Time

**Largely Charah fluff.**

**No rights to characters etc..**

Sarah had almost forgotten what it was like to wake up in their own bed, it had been so long, she thought as she stretched, then stopped. Without opening her eyes she smiled and said "You're watching me again, aren't you?", rolling over and opening her eyes as her husband replied "Of course, you're so beautiful and I've missed this." They thought that they probably should get up, but the twins weren't making any noise, and it had literally been months since they could just lay in bed together and relax, so they decided that they deserved a break.

They eventually got up, checked on the twins and took them down to the kitchen where they made a late breakfast, before they started chasing what they needed for the twins' party. At least with it being a first birthday, they didn't need to send invites out to all their playmates, they just had to invite the "family", see whether Casey was going to get Gertrude to fly home, and whether Alex, Carina or Jeff had anyone they wanted to invite. The hardest part was tracking down Sarah's father and seeing whether he'd come, which Chuck did as he knew that Sarah would like him to be there, but she wasn't about to reach out because he'd disappointed her too many times.

They had a quiet, relaxing time for the next week and a half, not doing much other than getting in food for the party and enjoying each other's company, and unstressed time with the twins. A few days before the party, Jack turned up and was punted to Carina's apartment, theoretically so she could bring him to the house for the party, but largely so Carina could keep an eye on him. Carina was quite capable of keeping the target in sight, and Jack found out pretty quick that she could be more even frightening than Chuck when it came to the idea of him upsetting Sarah, on the surface anyway. They had asked Emma whether she'd like Jack to stay with her while he was there, but there were too many memories for her to be comfortable with that.

The night before the party, the General's protective detail dropped off her and Roan at the house, as they'd be staying with them for the weekend. It was amazing to see the difference in her when she was being "Aunty Diane" with the twins, Roan relaxed her (as long as they weren't fighting), but she was a different woman when she was with the kids. After they put their things in the guest room, they all sat down for a few drinks and chatted, after a while they looked at each other and smiled at the same thought, that this was the most "normal" any of them had been in a long time, if ever. Diane did ask to see the features of the house that managed to get the sign-off from the protective services people, so Chuck brought the house system up on the TV and gave them a run through of the multi-level monitoring systems inside and out, the passive and active defence systems, the multiple "panic rooms" throughout the house (where they were located and how to access and seal them), where the arms caches were throughout the house, and how to access them etc. He also told them the access codes to the armoured SUV in the garage if they needed to make a run for it. Diane had a surprised (almost shocked) look on her face when she looked around as she said that she understood why they signed off on her being there without escorts, the house was a fortress, but certainly didn't look like it.

The next morning they gathered in the kitchen area and Sarah and Chuck made breakfast for them all. They sat down to eat, and then Chuck and Roan started setting up the tables and chairs out on the deck while Sarah and Diane had a chat inside. While Chuck was out of earshot, Diane kept an eye on him as she asked Sarah how she felt about the business that CI was handling being nearly 100% government from now on? Sarah looked at her quizzically and she told her that the operation that they'd just finished had impressed everyone involved so much that they all wanted to engage CI individually for other projects. She had requested that they hold off on approaching CI until the team had had a chance to recover from that mammoth operation (even by the standards of that business, 8 ½ months straight of solid 24x7 work was a lot to handle), but they'd soon be getting bombarded with requests, and she'd wanted to check off the record what she thought of the idea before she broached it in front of Chuck? Sarah thought for a bit and then said that they'd probably better off dealing with governments when everyone else was there looking on than they would be dealing with dodgy two-bit criminals, but asked why she was being asked first? Diane replied that she knew what it took for them to get out, and how she felt about being under government control, to which Sarah smiled and said that they wouldn't be under government control, they'd only engage under their terms, and walk away if the relevant government body didn't accept or honour those terms. At that point she looked up and saw Chuck watching her, when he saw her look at him he tilted his head to one side in question, so she just mouthed "Tell you later?" and he smiled and nodded.

People started to turn up over the next few hours, Emma and Molly turned up first as Molly was excited to see Sarah, Chuck, and her "niece and nephew", Casey (Uncle John), Alex and Jeff arrived next with the cakes and other things they'd picked up. Mary, Ellie, Clara and Stefan showed soon after, and Carina and Jack turned up when Carina decided to get out of bed, Carina didn't have any babies to change her morning habits, and Jack certainly wasn't going to try to disturb her until she was ready.

When the cakes and the rest of the the theme items for the party were displayed, everyone laughed, a Spy Kids theme party wouldn't be as much fun for 1 year olds as it would be when they were older, but it was totally appropriate for these kids, and keeping it within the family meant that there were a lot less questions to be answered. They'd probably try it again when the twins were bigger, and they'd had a chance to think about how to play it. Though the only kids at the party were Molly, Clara and the twins, they still had fun. Chuck and Sarah were content to sit, wrapped around each other as they watched their two little monsters/angels (depending on what they were doing at the time) running around unsteadily as they chased after the other kids, or the others playing with them. Emma, Ellie and Mary stood off to one side smiling at them as they watched the couple (and the kids), they were the women who had raised these two wonderful people (what they hadn't done themselves, anyway), and they were happy that they'd managed to overcome all the obstacles to find each other and get the life that they deserved.

As the day went on, Sarah, Chuck and Casey were standing together, quietly talking about what they were going to do with the payment for the operation that they just finished, the 4 year tax moratorium that they'd been granted meant that the best approach would be to distribute the money now (especially in case the tax breaks were revoked afterwards), they'd already decided that a $15 million bonus would be going to each of the team, including Ellie, and they'd wipe out any company debts then sink most of the remainder into corporate assets (it hadn't taken much for Chuck to convince the others to agree to sink $100 million into pre-paying for a Hypermach SonicStar, it was still 7-8 years away, but the idea of having their own hypersonic transport was pretty enticing) before allocating the payouts to the three of them. What they were discussing at the moment was the agreement to wait until Jack left town before talking about the bonuses (at Sarah's insistence as she didn't want her father getting ideas about getting his hands on any of the money), and wondering whether they would take the money and go. They expected that Jeff and Carina would be the obvious choices to do that, and they had every right to, but they would all be upset if Alex, Mary and Stefan left, as they were actual family in blood, not just in caring. They were hoping that no-one left, as the team as it was (including Ellie) could do amazing things, as shown by the mammoth operation they just finished, no-one else could have done that what they did, but it wasn't fair to hold anyone back from doing what they wanted. Ellie saw the sombre faces and came over to remind them that they were at her niece and nephew's party, and that they better cheer up, or else. Knowing that, as ever with Ellie, resistance was futile, they plastered smiles on their faces and went to join the others chasing the twins and Clara around.

After the others left they cleaned up the small amount that the girls hadn't already done, they put cartoons on for the twins and settled down with some wine to relax and chat. As the barriers were down, they talked openly, for the first time, about where things started. Diane talked about how she was horrified when she first to hear that Graham had allocated his infamous enforcer to the project, as Agent Walker's reputation was well known and feared, and she thought that it was the harbinger of doom for this apparent dropout that they were being sent to collect. Chuck looked across at her with amusement, asking how was that any different from her sending Casey? His reputation was just as bloody and several times as long as Sarah's, wasn't it? To that she just held up a finger and said that she'd known what her intentions were, whereas she had no idea about Graham's intentions. The other three laughed as they realised that she was already three sheets to the wind. Diane then took on a more serious look as she said that that was the most amazing thing about it, the two top killers in the US arsenal had been sent to collect this seemingly harmless and ineffectual individual, and he immediately affected and changed them. They both had orders to grab him and put him in custody but together they convinced us (waving her wine glass around at herself in a dangerous fashion) to leave them there to look after him so he could lead a "normal" life. Sarah spoke quietly from where she was cuddled up to Chuck, saying "Carina said he's like a virus, infecting everyone who meets him with his humanity and goodness." Diane and Roan looked at her, bemused at first, then agreeing with the sentiment. Sarah went on from there. "I know that I fell for him almost immediately, inside the first 10 or 15 minutes he'd melted my heart when he made things up to that girl for her idiot father screwing up taping her ballet recital by creating a new one just for her and getting it recorded, I think it took Casey a little bit longer to fall for him, though." They laughed at that and Roan jumped in "So you admit that you lied when you said that you weren't in love with him?" She mock glared at him. "Yes, I admit it, I was head over heels for him, you knew it and that was the whole reason you goaded him into kissing me so that I would buckle and give you a chance to say I told you so!" This just made him chuckle with a smile. "Oh I definitely knew that, but I'll admit that I couldn't quite believe how you had changed since last time I saw you in training, forgive me for saying this my dear, but back then you were damaged goods, used and abused by the CIA, your father and everyone else, you didn't trust anyone, and everything I'd heard of your reputation after that (yes, I was following your career to see how you went) made me certain that I would see a cold blooded killer when I saw you again, but instead, what I saw was this wonderful young woman in love, and that kiss proved quite amply who it was you were in love with." He chuckled again as he said "I was so very happy for you, all the more so to find that this one (waving his glass at Chuck) was at least as enamoured with you as you were with him. When you were taken and I asked him if you were worth dieing for he had no hesitation in saying yes. He was going in to save you with or without help or any hope of success. He even shamed me out of my funk to assist him." She looked up at Chuck with a smile, saying that was far from the only time he'd done that, he'd said almost the same thing to Carina and shamed her into helping save her too. At that, Diane waved her glass at them, saying that that was the problem, they were there to keep him away from trouble, but nearly every mission he'd run INTO trouble to save them, or someone else. With that they went quiet as they reflected on how things had gone, then when Diane when started snoring quietly, everyone agreed it was time for bed. Roan carried Diane up to bed and Chuck and Sarah took the twins, all in all a fitting end to a wonderful day.

The next day was a quiet one, partly because one person had a terrible hangover from the night before. They talked a little about what the General had said to Sarah about the extra government contracts, though Chuck pointed out that they may not have the personnel for big jobs after the bonuses from the operation just finished were given out. If worst came to worst, they may be back to the original team of three, and if so they would have the skill sets to do the jobs but resources would be limited. She looked at them and nodded (gingerly), saying that she expected if it came to that, the other agencies would still want to engage them, just as she did. As discussions went onto the other things and it appeared that he was about to mention his father, she stopped him with a look at Roan, as she'd kept their secret from him, so Sarah interjected to move the discussion in a slightly different direction.

That afternoon, the General's protective detail came to pick them up again for the flight back to DC, and the birthday weekend drew to a close.


	20. Next Phase

**Mo fluff, some dramas, oh, and you better get the brain bleach ready guys.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters etc...**

A few days after the twins' party, when Jack had headed back to whatever scam he was running, everyone was called to the house to sit down for a discussion. When they were told about the bonuses and given the details of the accounts that had been set up for them with the funds, Carina, Mary and Stefan were the only ones who knew that this wasn't a joke. It took quite a bit of explanation to get it through to the others that this was real.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey explained that the big operation had a big payoff, and also that they'd been given a 4 year exemption from taxes, but there was a chance that that may be revoked in any point by some politician, so they had to act fast on distributing everyone's share to stop the government trying to grab most of it. They also explained that nearly all the remainder of the payout had already been spent or allocated, so the actual funds in the CI accounts was only up a relatively small amount, for the same reasons that they'd already stated. Everyone argued against the distribution, saying that it was too much, but they just got told that it had been done, it WAS fair, and that they should think about what they wanted to do with it fairly quickly to make the most of the tax exemptions that they had at the moment.

Once they all got their heads around the fact that they each had $15 million, and were starting to think about what they'd do with that, the other issue, of who'd be leaving and who'd be staying, came to the fore. No-one was asked to give an answer straight away, but they were asked to give the matter some thought, and to let them know within a month, so the future plans for CI could be adjusted accordingly.

Everyone was milling around talking and then Carina took Sarah aside and Ellie took Chuck aside to sit down and talk, Mary and Stefan went out back to watch over Clara and the twins while that was happening, and Casey, Alex and Jeff sat down to talk about the matter. The gist of all these discussions was that everyone wanted to stay as part of CI, and the discussions were primarily about the others re-locating so that they'd all be together. The biggest shake up in these discussions was that Carina and Jeff were planning on sharing a house, nothing else changed that much in that Ellie and Clara were still sharing with her parents, and Casey and Alex were still sharing a house (the worry of being alone would be less if they were all in the same street).

What came out was that Carina and Jeff weren't together as a couple, per se, but they had found that they got on quite well and became fond of each other while they were sharing the double office and working together all the time. Jeff had been going over to Carina's and working on the language issues many nights, and they found that they fit comfortably, and laughed a lot together. Since she'd left the DEA and was in a better space, Carina's attitudes and behaviour had changed quite a bit, as she'd now lost a lot of the guilt and self loathing she'd found rather less need to bed hop in an attempt to drive those memories from her head, to fcuk the pain away as the song said. She'd changed in herself even before she left the DEA, that was the reason she'd left, and being free of all that was starting to let her be the person she'd been before that, so she didn't feel the need to punish herself as much any more. She'd found that a friend (as Jeff was) was worth more to her than a good screw that she'd move on from by morning. They actually had a good friendship that may be developing into a possible relationship (always the best way for a relationship to develop), and the time frames around the money and tax issues were just the right nudge to move them in that direction. When she sat down with Sarah, she wasn't planning on most of this coming out, it was mainly to tell her that she and Jeff would be staying with CI and they'd use the money to get a place together, as per the overall plan that everyone came to as soon as they accepted that the money was real. What happened when she started talking to her best friend, though, was that the floodgates opened and she told her what had been going on in her, she hadn't felt up to talking about it before that, but the money and house matters were the trigger that opened the door.

The reason that Ellie needed to talk to Chuck was related, but in the other direction. The only contact she'd had with Devon in the past 12 months was the two times he'd bothered to fly over to see Clara, and the one or two phone calls a month where he'd tell her that she had to bring Clara back and they'd always end with him trying to threaten her with loss of access to Clara if she didn't do that straight away. Many of the calls had been made when he was drunk, but the personality underneath doesn't really change when you're drunk, it just comes to the surface, so this was what she'd married. Obviously it was what the Woodcombs were really like, as he and his brothers were just like their father (not that their mother was much different, either). Chuck felt guilty as he hadn't realised that Ellie was going through this for the entire time she'd been there, they'd had some conversations about it in the first couple of months, when she was hoping that the man that she thought she'd married would come back. Then both he and Sarah had been locked in pretty much 24x7 for the last 9 months with that Ring operation, they'd basically just fallen into bed, exhausted, to catch a few hours of sleep before getting back into it over that time, so neither of them had been able to make time for her over that entire period, and she'd had to face all that on her own. He held her as she cried it out, then she told him the decision that she'd reached, to settle down here with Clara and her family, and sue for divorce and full custody of Clara. With the bonus money she now could afford the best representation, and she was also going to resign from the non-research positions she had, so she could spend more time with Clara. Devon could have access to Clara, but would have no rights to take her out of California. Chuck pointed out to her that she would have had the money for that anyway, no questions asked and she said knew that, but now it was her money, and that would actually make for a stronger case for full custody. Chuck also pointed out that she still had all of her government connections to help her if she needed them as well, and she nodded, still crying but now looking more hopeful and confident that she could manage this.

So, the next major project for Carmichael Industries was to locate three properties in around Chuck and Sarah's that could be purchased, and then made over like their's had been, so they all had the same level of security at home. They were a little surprised to find that the next door neighbour and the two properties immediately behind them were happy to accept offers for rather more than market value to sell out. Not what they had been thinking of, but it'd work out quite well.

With the premium price they paid, they managed to reduce the settlement period to under 2 weeks, just enough time for the previous owners to move out. As soon as the houses were vacated, the rebuilding work commenced, the houses were gutted, extended and all the security features were added. As part of the overall project, the basements/bunkers on the three houses were rebuilt and extended, and all 4 were linked by tunnels/corridors and extra chambers. Essentially they made the block of 4 properties into a CI compound, 4 (very) secure houses above ground, and a shared bunker complex underneath, they also added gates in the fences between the properties above as well, as the other neighbours were sold on the fact that they were family and very close friends.

While this was going on, they were all recovering from the draining marathon operation, and Chuck, Sarah and Casey were keeping the CI business communications going. They weren't doing much direct work, just small pieces of digital work for the General and some other client. Stefan and the others sometimes did pieces of the jobs, but none of them were working hard, they were still trying to recover.

Then Jack got himself arrested again. They'd bailed him out and arranged for a pardon for him by calling in and doing a lot of favours for government contacts, they'd thought it was worth it as he was free and clear, and it had looked like he may be able to smooth things over with Emma and Sarah. In the time that he'd been around Emma since he came back into their lives, Molly was starting to get attached to him, too, she saw him as her father as she'd been told that he was Sarah's father, so as a bright child it was only logical to her that her sister's father had to be her father, too, she couldn't understand why he only dropped around once in a while, but in her eyes he was the father she'd never had before. Then it all came crashing down the night that he was brought around in handcuffs by the police. He'd tried to talk his way out of things by saying that it was a misunderstanding, and his wife could set things straight, so they took him to her house to get the answers.

Emma looked out at the flashing lights and it took her back 20 odd years before he'd left with their daughter, in those days it was a common occurrence for him to be brought to the house in police cars. She quietly went outside and shut the door, hoping that Molly wouldn't wake up. When she walked to the police car, Jack tried to get her to corroborate his story, she just looked up at his face with that fake grin plastered over it, and then slapped it hard enough to throw him back against the car with his ears ringing. She told the police that he hadn't been her husband for 20 years, she'd divorced him after he'd taken their daughter and left, and she also gave them some of the names that he'd been arrested and charged under in the past to make their job easier. As she turned and headed back to the house she saw Molly standing in the window, staring at them. When she tried to explain it to Molly, she was hysterical and wouldn't talk to her. With Molly crying in her room, Emma sat and cried for a while and then called Sarah.

When Sarah told Chuck what happened, his first (brief) thought was that Jack was lucky it was Emma and not Sarah that he'd gone to, Sarah would have done far more damage. Then he quickly called Ellie to ask her to come over and look after the twins so he could take Sarah over to Emma's and bring them back. Neither Sarah nor Emma were in any state to drive with the emotional upheaval that they were both going through. When they got there, Molly was still screaming in her room and Emma was sitting in the lounge room looking shell shocked. Sarah went to Emma and Chuck went to Molly, he managed to get her quietened down, packed a bag for her and took her out to the lounge room. Sarah looked at him and left him in the lounge room with them while she went to quickly pack a bag for her mother. On the trip back, Sarah sat in the back with Molly and held her while Emma sat in the front. When they got back to the house, Ellie took one look at them and sedated all three of them, none of them were in any state to deal with anything at that point.

Over the next week or so, they tried to explain to Molly what happened, and Emma and Sarah tried to talk through the issues so that they could deal with them, themselves. Chuck and Carina went to see Jack, and after that Jack didn't want to get out, he felt much safer in prison with the lesser killers inside than he felt about the idea of dealing with those who'd made it clear what would happen if he EVER came anywhere near any of their family again. Carina said it best when she told him that he was dead to them, and if he ever tried to contact them or came within 100 miles of them again, he most certainly would be.

After the week they spent at Chuck and Sarah's, Emma and Molly went home. Sarah tried to get them to move in with them, or at least move closer, but Emma pointed out that Molly had her school, friends and activities there, and she didn't want to take her away from them. So things settled down again, a little more strained and unhappy, but they'd be there for each other.


	21. Clan Carmichael

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters..**

By throwing lots of money at the project, the remodelling of the houses (above and below ground) and getting things back together was done in a month, all up, including the house purchases, it cost over $20 million, but that was brought back to a round $20 million once the other houses and the apartment were sold. They'd done a rethink on the fence thing, so now there was basically a perimeter fence that intersected the houses on both streets, but the back yard itself was a shared space between the 4 blocks, a large open area with a full sized pool, gardens and relaxing areas, plus room for ball games if that struck anyone's fancy. The front yards were open for the 4 houses to leave an open, inviting look to them.

The others settled into their houses and things got into a good rhythm, Emma and Molly came over at least once a week, if not more, to spend time with them, and play soccer in the yard. Josie and Bella would also come over regularly, sometimes bringing partners or family. It looked like Clan Carmichael had a home. With the bunker complex and in-house facilities, Clan Carmichael also had its primary base of operations established, because they'd installed more facilities there than they had in the office, so much of the time, the team worked from home rather than in the office.

Everyone was still effectively taking it easy when the houses were finished, they did projects and went into the office sometimes, but rarely, and some of those visits were to interview candidates for "receptionist" and "office manager" positions for Carmichael Industries, the General presented them with a number of candidates who were thinking of leaving the military or intelligence forces, with high enough clearances to hear most of what was discussed in CI, and excellent combat/operational records. They'd found while struggling through the operation where they were all flat out 24x7 that they did need personnel for general business functions, and the General knew that the people of CI were important enough that they merited extra protection. When they came down to the prime choices, Chuck recused himself from the selection, saying that Sarah and Casey were more qualified to make the selection, but really in the interests of keeping out of domestic issues. The best candidates for the roles were pretty brunettes, and he didn't want to think what his wife may do if he showed any partiality to another pretty brunette. Sarah looked at him with narrowed eyes as she agreed with Casey that Josie and Bella were by far the best choices, and that look made sure that Chuck understood that they'd discuss this when they were alone, oh joy. Josie and Bella's addition to the team meant that the gender balance was way off in CI, especially as Ellie was more of an official member of the team, now that she'd given up her non-research roles. Now they had Sarah, Mary, Carina, Alex, Ellie, Josie and Bella on the girls' team, and Chuck, Casey, Stefan and Jeff on the boys' team.

The follow up discussion was delayed all of 10 minutes or so. As they walked back into Chuck's office, Sarah closed the door behind her, came around to prop herself on the edge of his desk and nodded back to Casey's office where they'd been, asking "What was that?" Chuck started with the same line he'd used before, that Sarah and Casey were more qualified to gauge the protective capabilities of the candidates, then gave up and stopped, looking up at her he just said "Brunettes are still like a red rag to a bull with you, it's been years since I hurt you with those other women but you still get upset and react the same way, so I didn't care who we got as long as I didn't choose them, and make you upset." She looked at him, a little stunned, and tried to speak, eventually coming out with "You thought I'd be jealous if you chose them?" He stood and took her hands, pointing out that that was always the way it had gone up to now, she was the most beautiful woman in the world to him, and he'd never want anyone else, but ever since he'd screwed up and hurt her that way in the early days, whenever he looked at or talked to a woman who was a brunette, she'd reacted, badly. Therefore, he didn't want to be involved in the decision process if it was going to upset her, he was confident that she and Casey would choose the best person for the job, but he didn't want to be the one who appeared to choose someone that she may have issues with. He cocked his had to one side and asked her if he'd read that wrong this time? She just said "No" and burst into tears. He held her while she cried and whispered in her ear that he loved her. Eventually she stopped crying and started berating herself for being such a mess, but he just held her and said "You're MY mess, for ever more, and don't you forget it my love." After she settled down and was OK, she kissed him and went back to her office to work. When he went to open the door of his office, Casey looked a question at him and he nodded that it was OK.

Now that they had "office staff", the business as looking more normal, as there were no longer periods where no-one was in the office. The main driver, though, was to free up the rest of the team for the real work that they were engaged to do. Most of them got some of their in-house jobs off their plates as Josie and Bella took them on, which made things a easier all around.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey had at least one teleconference or business trip a week (usually more) to meet with the various government bodies around the world about new projects that they wanted CI to take on. Most of the jobs that they took on involved less than a week of work for one or two people, the biggest that they'd accept for a while was a month or two's work for three to four people, as they were all still trying to recover from the big joint operation. It looked like Carmichael Industries wasn't going to have any trouble getting enough work in, the real issue seemed to be keeping it down to a manageable level.

The majority of their jobs didn't involve any direct involvement for CI in any engagements that were part of the operation, much to the chagrin of some of the team members, so they set it up some of the time to let them be involved, Casey, Carina, Mary, Alex, Josie and Bella all had their hands up for those missions as they missed the action. Sarah looked like she wished she could be part of that sometimes, too, but stuck to their (her) agreement, so the only times she or Chuck were involved were when they were both in, and they usually did the more challenging and difficult jobs, rather than the big firefights that Casey and some of the others preferred. Ellie or Emma looked after the twins when they did this, or had to go on business trips, as luckily the fussy phase where they wouldn't be separated from their parents at all was past. Even Chuck had to admit that he enjoyed being in the field with Sarah sometimes, neither of them ever forgot that they had the twins at home, and that they had to be far more careful than they'd been previously, but the thrill of handling the situation and coming out victorious was something that never really went away for them. They did most of their work on-line, but the missions that they did go on together were like date nights for them. With that in mind, all of them, even Jeff and Stefan, were required to keep up a reasonable exercise regimen, along with martial arts training/practice and firearms training/practice, the first two more for health than defence, but the need to be able to defend themselves was still strong. Therefore, everyone in Clan Carmichael was trained to look after themselves to some degree.

One of their problems were a holdover from the days before the Quinn incident, they did want to be mostly out of the violent and dangerous side of the business, but events and adversaries kept pulling them back in, yes, it was exciting once in a while, but they had loved ones and families now, and the risk of losing them outweighed the excitement. That being said, even though they'd managed to take down the major enemies, there were still remnants of those organisations out there who had them targeted for payback for taking down their businesses. Therefore, they had people coming after them or trying to set traps for them on an all too regular basis, hence all the security measures and defence training, and their smarter adversaries knew how to set honey pots tailored to ensure that CI would be engaged. Generally when one of these was triggered, it would be set up so that people had to be on-site to extract the information being targeted (hardcopy documentation, multiple levels of security controls and/or air gap security controls that required someone on-site to get into the systems to extract the intel), and there'd usually be a far stronger security force on hand than records suggested, like that operation when Casey got sorta shot in the arm. Anyway the only way to stop the attacks against them would be to get out of the business altogether and disappear completely, but most of the Clan weren't really prepared to do that, so they still had to fight at times.

**A/N: Given the nature of the "comments" that I've been getting on this chapter, this looks like the place to pack it in, don't know how I forgot how vicious some fans will get when anyone deviates from their view of how things were/would have gone. Should have remembered the wars over the finale.  
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**NB: To the anonymous lowlife who tried to hide behind a "guest review" and post a very personal attack against me as "Glasshouse", as you made sure that I couldn't respond to you in private, you disgust me.  
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	22. Resistance is Futile

**The computer and some other references are pulled out of another, unrelated, story I wrote.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters.**

Looking at the new project that they'd agreed to take on, because the underhanded bastards had gotten the President to plead with them to take it on, for their country, for the good of the world, rah, rah etc, they realised that their dream of getting OUT of the spy business was probably ever doomed to fail, because every time they thought they could make a break, something would drag them back. Sarah thought of the line from Star Trek about the Borg that Chuck loved to quote, "Resistance is futile", that pretty well summed it up!

This shouldn't be quite as big a project as taking down the new Ring on the face of it, probably about 2/3 to 3/4 of the team for about 6 months, and only 5 days a week, not 7, but they'd seen this sort of thing blow out all too often. What they wanted them to take on this time was to dismantle one of the largest criminal organisations in the world, make every part of it disappear. The problem was that legally the governments of the world had their hands tied when it came to definitively dealing with the organisation, whenever they tried to move on a large component of the organisation they'd get tied up in court, and by the time they got past that issue (if they did), they'd find that what they'd been after had disappeared, only to turn up somewhere else and the process would start again. So, the alternative they'd decided to try was the one that had worked so well against the ring, get Carmichael Industries to run the operation and (unofficially, of course) give them carte blanch to do whatever they thought necessary to get the job done.

The process meant having liaison officers around again, but since the last time they'd remodelled the CI offices so that a separate area existed for external personnel, they would be housed there and have no access to the internal CI areas, so that was more workable now. Some of the liaison officers from the previous exercise returned, including the rather nice young man that Alex had enjoyed talking to. Casey wasn't happy about this development, but had to concede that he'd always been a gentleman towards Alex, courteous, respectful and attentive, and if pushed he'd have to admit that the way that he was polite but not willing to back down if Casey's requirements didn't match what Alex wanted was something that he respected in the man. He knew Casey's reputation, they all did, but he was prepared to stand up to him for what Alex wanted.

The CI team was split between the office and Castle Carmichael (as people had christened the CI compound now, as it was a defensible location that they lived in, and was a tie to the old Castle where they'd started) Chuck, Sarah, Mary, Stefan, Ellie and Jeff were normally working at home, while Casey, Alex, Carina, Josie and Bella were normally in the office. The all communicated via chat channels on their computers, pretty much what they did when they were in the office together. The primary reason that about half the team was in the office was that they were the ones who were working closer with the liaison personnel, mostly. It didn't make sense for Chuck and Stefan to be away from Castle Carmichael though, as they were working with the new computing systems they'd built together.

To do what they planned they needed multi channel, high speed IT and voice communications available at all times, and high capacity, massively concurrent multi-language computing platforms, so what they mapped out and built for the Carmichael Communications System was a distributed multi point communications network which handled the last leg communications as local in whatever point of presence, channelling back to a multiplexed hub to on-feed the communications to me, communications from the last leg PoP connections through to the home/mobile node were locked down with military grade encryption and couldn't be traced. The Carmichael Mobile Node, was a custom, high end convertible tablet/laptop (that used interchangeable virtual systems for multi-language support, with 2 extra screens and a smart keyboard that could be actively remapped to the required languages) and a custom phablet (looked like a Samsung Note but could do far more), which could handle up to 5 concurrent communications lines (plus a wireless headset that was comfortable and unobtrusive enough to wear 24/7, and a set of wireless heads up glasses that could provide 2 separate hi-res displays and audio feeds and vary the transparency from overlay to full VR). The Carmichael Processing Centre used a communications interface of multiple gigabit links, multiplexed to feed the computer the bandwidth needed, it initially supported up to 100 Terabytes of memory, and 5 Petabytes of flash storage (for up to 100 concurrent virtual instances running 1TB of memory, with enough processing power and fast enough bus architecture to support full capacity operations on all instances) the primary display interface used an air mouse/remote to select and control each display array (plus audio output and input devices), it scaled up from a single 65", 2K display that could be configured as 4, separate 32", 1K displays associated to separate virtual instances, Chuck's preferred configuration was 4 (2 x 2), high end 65" 2K displays butted together, that could be configured as an array of options between 16, segregated 32" 1K displays of separate virtual instances of the system in different languages, to a single 130", 4K display (the display system had the capabilities to expand that to a 19.25 x 8.5' (255"), 12 screen display (4 x 3 array) that would support 48 separate instances concurrently, created that array but it was initially a bit of overload for normal usage, that set-up was in the bunker, it was good to dive into big, complex issues), and the smart keyboard/trackball interface that remapped to the language that was applied to the system active/selected at the time. The Processing Centre was located in a sealed chamber in the bunker complex, kept below freezing in an inert gas environment for optimal operation and to preserve the environment, you basically needed a space suit to go in there.

Given the intensive computer work that Chuck and his father were doing, it wasn't practical for them to be located away from the computer itself, the work that the others did wasn't generally affected by communications lag, but what they were doing was. Once again, they were basically data mining the Internet to locate the intel they needed, but now with the seriously increased computing power they had, and the significant upgrade of the Carmichael satellite fleet that they'd made with part of the last project's payout, they could suck that information in far faster. Chuck had an edge as he could flash on the Intersect triggers and he could absorb far more data feeds than anyone else, but for the most part, he was doing what his father was, scanning the data feeds that the system was throwing up, looking deeper if something looked of value, running additional searches or hacking into the systems if there seemed a potential for greater value, and passing it on to the others if it appeared that further analysis would be worthwhile.

Sarah and the others watched Chuck working at the big screen downstairs at times and it was a bit scary, he'd sit on the floor in front of the screen, with the highlighted displays flicking all over the massive surface every few seconds, and 2-3 times a minute for about 10 or 15 seconds a display would pop up to 4 times the size, and every few minutes or so, it would go up another 4 times (to open windows to code (in whatever language that instance was using) additional searches and/or incursions into systems to extract information) sometimes for up to 5 minutes or so. It wasn't anything that any of them (even his father) could comprehend, using one screen with 4 displays was as much as Stefan or anyone else could make sense of, so to see Chuck watching 48 displays at once was disturbing.

Bizarre and far fetched as it seemed, this was how Carmichael Industries could accomplish what no-one else could, and in a fraction of the time that was considered humanly possible. They dug out and infiltrated every one of the computer systems that the organisation had, organised raids on locations where hard-copy intel was stored, extracted and erased all electronic records, liquidated all assets and then made all funds disappear, locate and pointed out where key personnel were for raids (though they tried not to hear what happened to those personnel, these were the scum of the earth, murderers, torturers, rapists, drug pushers but while it was accepted that the only was to stop them was to dispose of them, it wasn't what Chuck or most of the others could handle hearing about).

Casey, Mary and Carina ran most of the raids on key sites and "processed" the key personnel directly, with some assistance from Josie and Bella. This was partly because they wanted to get back into the action again, but more because Carmichael Industries wanted to ensure that the key players and information were handled properly, to avoid invalidating the entire process. They had no more guarantee or confidence that the government representatives that they were dealing with/using around the world not been compromised by the criminal organisation than they'd had with the Ring. They'd seen plenty of evidence in the Ring operation that large swathes of government resources (at all levels) were easily compromised when money was being thrown around (payola trumps patriotism nine times out of ten with many people), and they'd already had serious arguments with several of the bodies they were dealing with over the "erased" finances of the organisation. They wanted this operation to wind up and not become another soul sucking epic like the Ring operation was, so they took direct charge of any part of the operation that could derail that plan, including the raids on any and all important sites, and the processing of any important personnel. This drew complaints from many of the bodies concerned, some because they were trying to cover up what had been going on where they were, but mostly it was rancour that CI had control over their people in the operations and could over-rule them. This was particularly prevalent in the countries where misogyny ran rampant (the majority of the locations in-scope for the project), and Mary or Carina were controlling the operation. Both of them had plenty of experience in dealing with this effectively, if not in a way that was at all appreciated by the locals, and Chuck and Casey had made it clear up front to all bodies involved that any interference with CI representatives would result in reprisals (reinforced by immediate (minor) drone strikes near enough to the most vocal opposers for them to feel the strikes), it was also written into the original agreement that CI had the authority to do this.

As the intel from raids as brought in, it was analysed to determine whether it created additional leads to follow up, or whether it was merely filling in the gaps in the intel that had already been collected. Like the Ring operation, the focus/plan was a co-ordinated schedule to "break the back" of the organisation in one sweeping raid on all their primary sites, so as to avoid "spooking" the organisation and letting anyone important slip away, but when a given portion of the structure was closed out, the intel was allocated to the relevant agencies in that part of the world to allow them to "clean house", especially in regard to people who were on the payroll of the criminal organisations.

Fairly early in the piece, some the agencies who they were dealing with started asking what happened to the funds of the organisation (obviously looking for a payout as the organisation was worth hundreds of billions of dollars), they weren't at all happy when they were told that the finances had been erased, like the other records. Some tried to pursue the issue until Chuck pointed out that that was not part of the mandate that Carmichael Industries was given, suggesting that they get this cleared up with the relevant heads of state, at the same time bringing up teleconference links to the parties in question. This always made them back down, and question how the hell he had the access to pre-emptively initiate a connection into the private offices of so many heads of states, including the President of the United States. Anyway, the ones asking weren't at all happy, but they stopped asking about the money.

The only money related query after that was at the end of the operation when Aunty Diane came to "see the twins". The monitoring system showed them coming, so as they came up the drive, the garage door opened to show Chuck standing there, they drove in, the doors closed and the protective detail were told to stay in the car (they didn't appreciate it much when Chuck reminded the General that she should leave the windows open for them a little) while Chuck and the General went inside, locking the garage door after them. Once inside, she sat down with Chuck and Sarah to have a chat about the money. Her opening statement/question that the money hadn't been erased was no surprise to either of them, she was no idiot and knew them better than anyone outside of CI. Chuck just shook his head and said that it wasn't erased, but it had effectively been taken out of circulation, it had been punted around the world a couple of times through scores of intermediary banks in millions of separate transactions, and now it was buried in numerous accounts in tax havens around the world. The General nodded and asked whether they were prepared to tell her what they planned to do with it? Chuck shrugged and said that they'd probably use it to fund projects that they needed to do, and/or invest in worthwhile projects, but Carmichael Industries would still have to charge for its services, otherwise people would wonder about why they didn't need the money any more. The General nodded again and asked "How much?" Chuck grinned and told her "About $285 Billion, give or take." That managed to shock her, "Two hundred and eighty five Billion?", to which both Chuck and Sarah smiled and nodded. She grinned wryly and said that she obviously didn't have to worry about Carmichael industries going under any more. After that she asked whether they knew why John Casey was investigating her liaison officer? Sarah fielded that one, saying that it probably had something to do with who he was dating. The General grinned and asked "Alex?", to which Sarah nodded and they all had a good laugh. After that, they wound things up and they took the General back to the garage and her protective detail, opening the door for them to leave.

They wound up the new project in about 5 months, overall the organisation had ceased to exist, all records and assets had disappeared, all significant personnel had been taken, the important ones had disappeared suspiciously, and most of the rest were in solitary in maximum security prisons. The intel packages that had been handed out resulted in rather more work for the agencies in the various countries, as they'd contained evidence of other personnel and facilities, but more importantly the details and nature of the organisation's links into the government and police and military bodies. Any follow up work that involved Carmichael Industries was treated as a separate engagement between CI and the agency/government concerned, they had put framework into the original agreements to define these follow up engagements, but this time they'd made sure that he main project was closed off once the organisation's "back" was broken in the original agreement.

**A/N: The thing to remember, guys, is that "Aunty Diane"s private chats with Chuck and Sarah in Casa Bartowski are all off the record, and are never repeated to anyone else, not even Roan, so no-one else knows what she finds out.**


	23. Alexx

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters... mlm**

Casey wasn't too happy with recent developments, Alex was getting pretty tight with her young man, Beau. While he liked Beau and was certain that he wouldn't do what the troll did to her (twice), his little girl had had her heart broken twice in the last couple of years, and Casey was damn sure he wasn't going to let it happen a third time. They were having regular "family" dinners with Kathleen so they could all get to know each other, but Kathleen couldn't get out of the habit of calling him Alex, which complicated things on so many fronts, two Alex's, Beau's confused questions about it, memories of the time before he left rising to the surface all too easily and Gertrude, she wouldn't return his calls, when she did take his calls was distant, it didn't look like absence was making the heart grow fonder, it just looked like out of sight is out of mind. Hell, even when he'd been over there working with her and her people she was growing distant and they weren't connecting anywhere but the bedroom, so it looked like the honeymoon was over and they'd jumped straight into separation, in preparation to split up. So with all that going in Europe and it feeling like the last 20 years apart had disappeared with Kathleen, Casey really had no idea where things were heading.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Castle Carmichael), Chuck and his father used some of the money in the off-shore accounts to give the core systems a number of significant upgrades, so that the Processing Centre system went up to 1 PB of memory, 100 PB of flash storage and 10 times the processing power and bus throughput, this allowed over twice the number of concurrent virtual systems, each with over twice the memory and processing power, while allocating half the capacity for the AI Halle that was running on the system (They'd wanted to use HAL, but neither of them felt like constantly interacting with a male voice, so it became Halle.) The original system that used to be in Castle Carmichael was re-allocated to the office to upgrade the processing power there. Writing the VM manager platform for the new machine architecture in GPU assembler had been interesting, as neither of them had used that assembler language before, or written a platform of that nature. They'd been futsing about with it for the past 12 or so months when they had any free time, but hadn't been close to a working platform when they built the first machine, which was why that one used Intel processors and more standard architecture (and largely off the shelf platforms and software with some customisation). Once they had the VM platform written, they customised the operating and virtual network systems and software that they'd be using on the platform for optimal performance and security, and it was all systems go, oh, aside from actually writing the AI for Halle, that was a fairly large project in and of itself, too. As no-one outside the "family" knew anything about the Castle computer (as the second generation computer got labelled), there was obviously no benchmarking done against other computers, but there was a good chance it was one of, if not the, most powerful computers in the world, between the overkill hardware specs and a custom platform designed to eke the highest possible performance out of that hardware, it was one hell of a powerful computing platform.

While Chuck and his father were working on their science project, as the girls loved to call it, the others were getting on with more normal things, well as normal as things could be in their world. When Sarah or Mary (or Ellie) thought the boys were getting too engrossed, they'd do something to stop them, one of Sarah's favourite tactics was to send the twins in to get Chuck (not that he didn't spend plenty of time with her and the twins, but she knew only two sure fire ways to get his mind off his project, and didn't feel comfortable using the other method in front of her father in law. She DID use that one when she'd wake up in the middle of the night to find Chuck engrossed in system coding in the early hours of the morning though, she was starting to re-think the benefits of having system interfaces in every room of their house sometimes). Anyway, once the new machine was in place and working, the time they spent on it was rather less, though Halle was an on-going project.

In Carmichael Industries, the majority of the engagements that they accepted were small, short term jobs, get in, complete it and get paid. They were hoping to keep the over the top projects that they let themselves be suckered into down to one a year, at most. The problem, of course, with that was that Casey wasn't the only one who could be swayed by the "Do it for your country" argument, they were all susceptible to that one to some degree, so they did let themselves be roped in at times. There were still enough engagements that involved physical incursions to keep Casey and the others who were missing that side of things relatively happy, though the majority of the work was on-line. The new gear that Chuck and his father whipped up helped them in these engagements, as not only did the VR glasses effectively work as night vision/IR goggles, they gave made it possible to access Intersect like information feeds when the wearer was carrying a mobile node, so they could bring up schematics, manuals all sorts of things, and if they were underground or whatever, and couldn't get links back to the Castle Computer, the mobile nodes could be preloaded with terabytes of information that could be accessed locally.

As they still did have the physical side of operations involved and as they still had enemies out there, the defence and firearms training and practice was an on-going thing for everyone, whether at the office or at Castle Carmichael, the up-side of that was that it was getting and/or keeping everyone in good shape physically, the down-side was that most of them had scrapes and bruises a fair bit of the time. Emma was initially against the idea of Molly learning martial arts when she was with them, but the girls put up a convincing argument and she came around, she even joined in when they were over there together. Training was a couple of years off yet for Clara, but Ellie told her that she'd be including her as soon as she was big enough (as she was having a great time with it herself, now that she'd joined in), and Sarah's look said that the twins would be starting the minute they were big enough, too.

The direct involvement in operations brought Casey to a key decision point, as well as the edge of death. When they were in a facility that CI had been engaged to recover some new "world changing" technology from, they got cornered by a security force that was larger, better equipped and considerably more aggressive than they'd been led to believe by the client. Casey tried to protect Carina, Mary and Josie, and got himself shot to pieces. At that point the team gave up on the original objective and just blew up the labs and the security forces to give themselves cover as they extracted Casey, barely keeping him alive on the way back to the plane and and onto the medical equipment, and only doing marginally better by using the medical information via the mobile nodes to stabilise him while flying back to the nearest safe hospital. Casey was on the brink of death for over a week, once he was in hospital he had a number of operations, and remained in ICU for most of the time. Gertrude had been called while they were still in the air but she didn't go to be with him, just sent a message that she hoped he recovered, Kathleen, on the other hand, flew over there with Alex and stayed by his side the entire time until he regained consciousness, which was another 4 days after the doctors were prepared to say that they thought he'd live, so it was Kathleen and Alex that he saw when he finally opened his eyes. He knew then who he was meant to be with, and he didn't hear about Gertrude for another week after that, when Carina told him that they'd called her from the plane but she apparently didn't regard the issue important enough to fly over for, and that she hadn't called to check how he was since. Casey had become rather more eloquent after being exposed to Chuck for about 7 years, but when Carina told him that he just grunted and rolled over. He was thinking that he'd expected that Alex, at least, would have told him, but realised that she'd probably withheld that snippet of information to spare him the hurt, given that it appeared that Gertrude didn't care. As he thought about it, it came to him that it probably wasn't so much not caring as being pragmatic, in that it didn't sound like there was any chance that he would have survived, nine days before the doctors took him off death watch and another four before he regained consciousness, the numbers on that said that hope was unrealistic, but the not checking, that did hurt after what they'd been through together in the period up to Sarah's incident with Quinn.

When Casey recovered enough to travel he was flown home, and there was no discussion or surprise when Kathleen moved in to look after him. A few days after he got home, he was sitting/laying out on the rear patio with Kathleen looking after him, and Alex was standing on Chuck and Sarah's patio looking over at them. Sarah saw her crying and went to her, as Alex started to break down Sarah took her inside so Casey wouldn't hear her, holding her and letting her cry it out. Alex, like nearly all of them, knew quite well how close they'd come to losing him, but she'd managed to hold it together for nearly a month before she fell apart. Now that he was home and relatively safe she let it go, she was definitely her father's daughter, strong when she was needed and only giving in to her own needs when the crisis was past.

When she'd let most of it out Sarah decided to bring her back to a more normal space and asked how she felt about her parents being back together. Alex caught her breath and looked at Sarah, saying that she still couldn't believe it, there had been some signs at the "family" dinners, but she thought she'd just been imaging things. When her mother wouldn't leave her father's side for 2 weeks until he work up, there was no longer any question on her side, and the look on her father's face when he opened his eyes and saw them there said it all. So yeah, she had a family again, well not again, for the first time really because her dad had left before she was born. She didn't know how to handle it. Sarah hugged her and pointed out that she and Chuck understood pretty well how she felt, Chuck's mother left when he was 9, his father when he was 13 and he'd only managed to find them in the last few years, and his father had come back from the dead even more literally than her's had in the last year and a half. She'd been taken away from her mother when she was 7, and only really reconnected with her in the last couple of years, while her father (pausing as pain crossed over her face) was taken away when she was 16, and she only saw him a handful of times after that, usually for only a few hours at most at a time, so neither of them had parents as they were growing up, other than Ellie for Chuck. So yeah, they had a bit of an idea how she felt, Alex smiled and hugged her, saying thank you.

Casey, being Casey, couldn't stand doing nothing, so as soon as he was a little stronger, he had them bring him a mobile node so he could work through his backlog. Within 2 weeks he was sitting in on teleconferences, but Kathleen was monitoring him and took away the computer as soon as she saw him flagging. Everyone else loved it, Casey could be, and often was, a terrifying man, a force of nature, but when Kathleen laid down the law he submitted pretty damn fast. Letting him see that they were laughing was another thing altogether, as his death stare carried quite well across the common yard area when he caught their eye. Kathleen had also restarted the family dinners with Alex's Beau while Casey was recuperating, and Beau found out very quickly NOT to treat Casey as an invalid, that was not a sensible thing to do if you wanted to keep your own health.

While Casey was laid up, and the other three weren't in the best shape either (Casey came out by far the worst, but they all carried injuries of some sort, both Carina and Josie also minor gunshot wounds), CI went back to on-line only gigs, but that was the majority of their work most of the time, anyway, so it didn't curtail their operations that much, and the nerd side of the company could carry the load OK.


	24. Mortality

**Sorry for the delay, I've been enjoying reading stories from 2 or 3 other writers that I found quite enjoyable as they have interesting takes on the Chuckverse, so when I got to a choke point I changed to reader mode. Also been dragging my feet on putting things out for other reasons.**

**This one's a bit fluffish.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters.**

What happened to Casey was a very strong reminder of the dangers of the life they'd been trying to move on from, but were still living. It would be a long time before he was back to full operational fitness, if ever. He'd come closest to death that any of them ever had, well aside from Stephen, but Stephen's shooting had been effectively an execution rather than an operational casualty. The others would never forget dragging his bullet ridden body out of that facility, desperately trying to keep him alive. Mary and Carina were the most experienced operatives after Casey (Mary of course had more years in the business but Carina probably at least matched her exposure to drastic circumstances) on that operation, but neither of them had ever seen that much damage to a team-mate, and friend, before.

While it brought the reality of their own mortality back to all of them, it was obviously more of an eye opener to those who were operationally active in the team. All of them in CI except Ellie had a partner of some sort currently. On top of that Mary and Stefan had their children Ellie and Chuck, and their grandchildren Clara, Yvonne and Zack, Chuck and Sarah had Yvonne and Zack, Casey had Alex (with grandchildren sometime soon probably not out of the question, she was a grown woman with partners now) and Bella had her 2 children to worry about. Even by the "normal" standards of the spy game, this team still operated at a higher level of danger much of the time, as a result of being made up of what was generally considered to be the best of the best. They had been planning on getting away from that side of the business for nearly two years now, and now they had a very graphic example of why they needed to follow through on that seared into their brains. They found that any need to scratch the itch for the excitement of missions faded very quickly when images of Casey bleeding from multiple wounds or buried under masses of life support equipment rose to the surface.

For several weeks after Casey got shot, their children found themselves being picked up and/or hugged quite often, whenever the images of Casey and what they could lose came to mind. In a way, the "spy code" was right, mixing the spy life and family life wasn't a sensible or good thing to do, but the decision it brought them to was very different from what their bosses had advocated when they worked for the government, they all chose their children and family over the spy life. They were resolved to act on the decision that they'd made two years ago now.

The Government and other clients weren't happy when Carmichael Industries started rejecting any and all engagements which were likely to involve action of the type that occurred on the engagement where Casey was shot, but the answer from that point on was that if they wanted those services they'd have to go elsewhere. They would still evaluate physical security controls and test facilities' resistance to incursions, but they'd no longer knowingly engage in the type of activity that involved violence of that nature. A few tried to misrepresent the nature of the engagements to them after that, but when the lies were discovered they just disengaged and left, then had some serious discussions with their erstwhile clients. Some of those clients who were belligerent also found that parts of their businesses were mysteriously wiped out electronically afterwards. News of these events tended to spread fairly quickly, and attempts to emulate them stopped, as there was no way of ever proving that CI did anything to the systems that were wiped there was also no way of preventing it happening to other systems, most people likely to engage CI could work that out for themselves.

So at last CI had been pretty much pushed to where they'd planned to be since before Sarah's incident, focusing on the cyber side of the business and steering clear of the action. When they were talking through the issues and ramifications, they were reminded that the selling point used to initiate their biggest engagements was as a think tank, as that was the area where they delivered what no-one else could. Therefore, taking the action engagements that others COULD do out of the equation didn't really detract from their reputation or effectiveness to any appreciable degree.

At least half of them worked out of Castle Carmichael most of the time, Casey as his mobility was still limited, Chuck and Sarah because that was they got to be with the twins in a better environment (and Chuck was working directly on the Castle computer). Stefan and Jeff, they too were working directly on the Castle computer (though the office computer also had plenty of capacity now), and the others because it was usually easier and a better atmosphere. The only ones who worked at the office pretty much all the time were Josie and Bella, and Alex spent a fair bit of time in the office as it was closer to Beau.

Chuck and Sarah still had to go into the office for meetings with clients at times, even Casey had to drag himself in for some of those meetings. When one prospective client asked Casey why he was having so much trouble moving and he responded that he'd had an accident on a job, Chuck and Sarah shared a look, appalled (that time when he fell about five storeys further than planned after Sarah threw him out a window to land on a window washers' platform because a shackle broke and dumped him off the platform MAY have qualified as an accident, but being shot to pieces didn't in their books). Luckily Sarah could usually distract the clients in those meetings if they started to focus on the wrong things, a stunning woman trained to be alluring could turn their heads without trying or letting them get anywhere near her. They also found out by accident that other members of the family were amazingly effective at disarming their clients when the door opened in the middle of a meeting and two miniature versions of her (albeit one male) ran into the conference room. The twins had Sarah's sapphire blue eyes, golden blonde hair (though with Chuck's curls) and features and they captivated most people, but their parents were surprised when it worked on a group of hard nosed military types who didn't appear to mind in the least that they'd interrupted a highly classified meeting. They may have reminded them of their own children or grandchildren, but whatever it was, the military gentlemen delayed Sarah and Chuck getting the kids out of the room because they wanted to meet them, and the tone of the meeting afterwards was decidedly more congenial than it was before.

Casey couldn't do anywhere near as much as he normally did for some time, of course, and any time he tried to stretch himself Kathleen shut him down PDQ, but his mind was not affected at all, and that experience and cunning still trumped most people in the areas he excelled at, so he was still delivering, even if he was laying down much of the time. Given that Kathleen had moved back in and taken over looking after Casey, they had to get her cleared to the same level as pretty well everyone else, as she was around when highly sensitive intel was being discussed. Getting her cleared led to other issues (mainly for Casey) as she now knew what he and Alex had been getting into in recent years. The others sympathised with Casey but they couldn't help laugh as he backed down and took everything when she ripped into him. She WAS the woman in his life just as he was her man, she didn't move on to anyone else in the 20 odd years that she thought he was dead, and neither did he, really, what relationships he'd had were mainly physical, including Gertrude. Kathleen was the only woman he'd ever committed to, so seeing them as an old married couple now was, basically, right.

For the rest of them, there was no change from what made them the best in the business. They could deliver results that no-one else could, so Carmichael Industries had no shortage of contracts or satisfied customers, they just changed the parameters of the engagements to eliminate nearly all non-cyber elements. The Castle Computer and new search engines that Chuck and Stefan created handled much of the "heavy lifting" in chasing down triggers for the intel they were searching for, but it still took the human element and unusual, "special" brains to identify and follow the leads once the triggers were found. Chuck and Stefan did much of this work, but more and more Ellie and Sarah (and Casey) were working to identify these elements as well, Chuck and Stefan still needed to do most of the formatting of the search engines and coding their way into systems to follow the intel, but the different perspectives of Ellie, Sarah and Casey could flag triggers and associations that Chuck or Stefan missed, so paired up they were more effective than they were alone. Chuck and Sarah normally worked together (obviously) and Ellie normally worked with her father, when Casey was involved he would generally team up with Chuck and Sarah (when she was there), the old team still shone, complementing each other's strengths and mitigating each other's weaknesses, just working in a different area to what they did originally.

Aside from slight changes to the roles in hunting the intel, the other tasks were much the same, much of the "leg work" in deeper analysis of the intel (which didn't involve much hacking into systems) was covered by Jeff, Alex and Carina. Planning of follow up operations was generally handled by Sarah or Mary (or Chuck, as Sarah's involvement in the searches freed up time for him to take on his part of the role there, too). Oversight and running the follow up operations was generally handled by Mary, Casey and Carina. The CI team did an amazing juggling act as they each powered through their part of the job and tossed the results over to (or back to) the one who needed to run with the next piece of work, and when they caught the ball they'd slot it into what they were doing seamlessly. Every one of them was at the high end of "smart", Stephen and his children may have represented the peak, but Sarah was close to it, and the rest weren't that far behind her, so that group of first class minds working together so closely was what created the unique "think tank" that everyone wanted working on their side. No-one could understand what they did or how they did it, but the results spoke for themselves.

Mary and Stefan (like many grandparents) did spend a fair bit of time watching their grandchildren, Clara was obviously going to be a bright child, thanks to her mother, but Yvonne and Zack were going to be something else, they hadn't reached 2 yet, but they were already speaking multiple languages well and there wasn't a problem anywhere near their age level that they couldn't solve easily. The fact that they had two brilliant parents was an obvious factor, but it looked as though, in genes as well as life, Chuck and Sarah complemented each other to create something bigger and better than either of them alone. Perhaps Aunty Diane's joke about world domination wasn't that far from being realised?

In a way, the CI process had swung back towards what it had been at the start before Jeff found the Orion references in the Arms Trafficker's data. As far as Chuck and Sarah's lives went, they'd get up in the morning, get the twins out of bed and organised, get dressed in at least business casual clothes in case they had impromptu teleconferences with clients, and then load the twins into the car (usually Sarah's Shooting Brake) and head to the office if they had meetings, or head up to the study to work if it was a "normal" day. Casey usually parked himself on the patio and used a mobile node to do his work, unless he had to drag himself into a teleconference or actual meeting, and the others usually just set up in their studies for work, so yeah, the atmosphere was relatively normal, even if the actual work they were doing wasn't.

They had another side issue that they were debating quite a bit, the General and other government agencies wanted the designs for the Carmichael Mobile Nodes, specifically the setup with the Augmented Reality glasses that they'd used on missions. There was no way that they were going to get the designs to build their own, but the debates were over whether they were prepared to sell (limited) units to the government clients so that they could use the equivalent of the "external intersect" functionality on missions. Chuck and Stefan were confident that they could build units and software which would be "bricked" if someone tried to open and/or reverse engineer them, but the question was whether they were comfortable with agents using the government mentality having that type of capability. So, they had quite a few nights when they would all sit around and talk through the pros and cons of the proposal, initially it was Stefan, Chuck and Jeff arguing the "con" and the long term/traditional agents (Casey, Sarah, Mary, Carina, and Alex) arguing the "pro" side, but Sarah and then Casey switched sides to "con" once they'd stopped to think about how trustworthy (or rather untrustworthy) the government had proven throughout their careers. Once they'd agreed that they did NOT trust the government with the full functionality, they sorted out the parameters that they were comfortable with (hardware, software), and built a handful of test machines to provide to select requesters to decide whether they wished to proceed with that level of functionality. One of the key factors on what they built was that nothing within the devices could be extracted or altered, any data that was loaded onto the devices overwrote whatever was on them previously (which was quite like the Intersect in that respect) and could only be displayed/output via the dedicated AR glasses. Therefore, each time they wanted to update any information on the device, they had to overwrite everything on the device. This was obviously something their clients weren't happy with, but it was something that they had to accept if they wanted the functionality that they actually asked for (they could see from the gleam in the General's eye as they were discussing this that she, personally, was quite happy with the way it turned out, as she'd previously agreed with them that the unlimited technology was too dangerous to put in the hands of morally ambiguous or bereft government agents).

After arguing for a short while the government clients agreed that the devices delivered the functions requested and agreed to the pricing contracts, so Chuck and Stefan set up an automated production facility in one of the Castle Carmichael bunkers, operated by Halle, and they started producing them for delivery to select clients, along with the dedicated upload devices.

So CI had added a (lesser) revenue stream to the primary business line, and settled back into the business that it was re-created to focus on. Casey was recuperating and everyone else was fairly happy with their lives. They still kept up the defence and firearms training and practice as they still had enemies out there, even if they weren't active in "that" side of things anymore, overall, life was good.


	25. A Person, Actual and Whole

**OK, I get why these things should be planned, framed and compiled properly, this was originally just going to be a throw away one shot that came out of a chat with someone, but some silly people said that they'd like to see more. Well that first chapter was about 62K words and five weeks ago and I'm still just writing off the top of my head, it's startin' to feel a tad thin up there now ;^)**

**Still fluffy.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters...**

They'd all agreed with and were fully invested in the decision to make the long overdue departure from the spy life, but now that they'd bitten the bullet, as it were, those who had lived most of their life fully immersed in the spy world were troubled, and scared (not that they wanted to admit it). It was worst for Sarah and Casey, but Mary, Carina and Josie felt it as well, they had been trained and conditioned to be human weapons, and two of them had been among the most effective in the world in that role throughout nearly all of their adult lives, but now they were leaving that life behind and walking away from it, hoping against hope that they could make it as "real" people in the "real" world. Sarah had a flashback to one of Chuck's movies (as she did so often after being with him for the last seven plus years), where the Captain was asking the girl holding a gun on him whether she was anything but a weapon, and telling her that he was betting their lives on her being a person, actual and whole. That was just how she felt at the moment, except she saw herself as both sides of that discussion. She just didn't know how she was going to do it, and neither did Casey. They knew that they wanted this, needed this, and that they had people who loved them and would stand by them no matter what, but they didn't know how to disarm the weapons.

Chuck knew most of what was going through Sarah's mind, he could see it in her eyes and he wanted to help her, but didn't know how. Deep down, she STILL thought that she was the monster that didn't really deserve a better life away from those things, as she' killed so many and done terrible things in the past (more than Casey in a fraction of the time that his career spanned). All Chuck could do was love her, hold her and be there to listen to anything she wanted to tell him without judgement, it felt totally inadequate but that was what he could offer, well all that she'd let him do for her. Sarah knew what was in his mind just as well as he did her's, so she kept reminding him that what he gave her WAS what she needed, it always was. At least the fact that everyone around them now understood the issues and were both intelligent and sensitive enough not to rub salt in the wounds (intentionally or otherwise) while those who were having to deal with those issues were trying to make the necessary changes in their lives to adjust made things so much better than they would have been a couple of years or so ago.

Sarah would often sit in the twins' room once they'd got them to sleep and watch them. Watching her children, their children, calmed her, but it also made her question how she could possibly deserve them, or Chuck. She knew now (because he had told her) that Chuck had followed up all references to her in the Intersect and intelligence systems after she fell victim to Quinn and put together all the information about her past, so he could learn everything he possibly could about her to try to find, help and protect her as best he could. It wasn't about invading per privacy at that point, it was rather to be able to protect her, her secrets could hurt her if someone else used them against her (especially if she didn't remember them for any reason), so he wanted to make sure he had a way to counter whatever anyone else may come at her with. Even with the vast amount of redacted intel relating to her myriad identities and activities, due to Chuck's mind and abilities, once he'd applied himself to the search he'd filled in the holes from other sources and angles and had managed to put together fairly detailed information on all of her operations and missions throughout her career (and the time she spent and worked with her father before she got coerced into joining the CIA in her mid-teens).

Her husband DID know her, and everything she'd done, and that was why she couldn't really understand how he could still look at her and love her the way that he did. She didn't question that he loved her unconditionally and unreservedly, or that he would do anything and everything possible to prove that love to her (he'd been doing that for over four years now no matter how arduous the conditions were, and his efforts over the three years prior to that weren't at that much lower a level), but how he could know, have seen, everything she'd done and NOT look at her as a monster, that she still couldn't understand. He had regarded HIMSELF as a monster for planning and actioning the operation to rescue his father that had killed a mere fraction of the people that she'd killed, but he never looked at or regarded her that way, how could he do that? These things were what she tended to think about when she was sitting alone with her sleeping children, she knew that Chuck would leave her alone to her thoughts as long as she wanted, but also that all it would take to have him at her side in under 30 seconds was to speak his name and he'd hear that over the baby monitor (which they still used in the twins' room, as they worried about their children).

After she'd had her time with the twins Sarah went down to the living room where Chuck was sitting on the lounge, using the big screen as a computer monitor as he worked away. She rested her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the top of the head (about the only way she could turn the tables on him with that one), she presumed that he'd flashed when she was sitting in his lap less than 10 seconds later as while Chuck had some good moves nowadays, reaching back to throw her over his head and deposit her in his lap that fast and gently was a bit beyond native Chuck mode capabilities. They kissed and cuddled for the next half hour or so then Sarah went to do the popcorn and get some drinks as Chuck loaded a movie for them to watch. When Sarah returned with the supplies she settled back into her favourite seat (in Chuck's lap) and they kicked back for a couple of hours of cuddling and escape into the movie, a MUCH needed change of pace for them.

The next morning they were back in the normal routine, get up, try and get the twins to eat breakfast then clean them up, dress them and set up something up for them to play while Mommy and Daddy took turns having a shower and getting dressed, then they settled into the day of work and teleconferences, with breaks to chase after or look after the twins at often but irregular intervals for either or both of them. The advantage of working from home and the while Castle Carmichael setup was that they could just take the twins and stroll across the yard to sit down and talk with Casey about work issues, or the problems he was having with the change of direction which were similar to Sarah's.

Chuck hadn't gone through the same training or years of the dark side the Sarah and Casey had, but he had the knowledge in his head, and he'd seen, and even participated in the dark side in the time since they'd come into his life, so he could probably relate better than anyone else, even his mother or Carina, because as bad as their experiences had been (especially Carina because of the role she'd been forced into adopting to the extent that it effectively overwrote her whole being for many years) they hadn't been immersed in the experiences with Fulcrum or the Ring, and they hadn't had the amount of blood on their hands that Sarah, Casey, and even Chuck had. So the old team was still co-dependent to save each other from themselves.

One question that Casey dropped on them trumped everything else for shock value, when he asked for advice about proposing to Kathleen again. They didn't realise that he was serious at first, but when they understood that he WAS, they settled down to try and help him handle the issue at hand. They didn't have to ask if he was sure, because even if it hadn't been obvious before he got shot up, it was quite obvious to everyone from that point on. One part of their advice that he did take issue with (mainly because he didn't know how to handle it) was the role reversal of asking the father's permission before he popped the question. Alex was the person of strength in Kathleen's life before Casey came back into it, and on top of that, she deserved a chance to have her say about her views about the way things would go as they progressed, her parents getting back together would turn her life upside down as well, so she deserved her chance to tell her father what she thought and felt about it. When Sarah told him to man up and get in touch with his lady feelings Chuck almost lost it as he watched the emotions that were streaming across Casey's face, angry, terrified, confused, remorseful, hopeful, doubtful. Casey showed more emotions in under half a minute than he had in the first few years that they'd been together as a team, but in the end he nodded, agreeing that he had to do it. When he did talk to her, she was, as they all expected, ecstatic, and she was all for it. Kathleen didn't surprise anyone, either, as she immediately and joyfully said "Yes!".

So, they were planning another wedding in Clan Carmichael, Chuck and Sarah were happy that things had finally come good for Casey (he was staying with John Casey to avoid issues, especially given that Alex Coburn had been officially dead for over 25 years, though he had legally taken Alexander as his middle name, as Kathleen still called him that most of the time) and Kathleen, and they decided to hold off on their news for a while. They'd just found out that Sarah was pregnant again, due to being tipped off by the morning sickness again. The fact that Sarah didn't seem able to avoid morning sickness made it hard to hide the pregnancy from those who'd spent their lives noticing things, but it was actually Kathleen who pulled Sarah aside and called her on it. When Sarah admitted that she was right and that she and Chuck had decided to hold off telling anyone, Kathleen insisted that they share the news, because everyone would be as thrilled as she was.

So Casey was out of the spy game and finally he was marrying Kathleen, after walking away when they were supposed to get married the first time because he was conned with the "duty" argument when he was young and impressionable. At Kathleen's insistence, they moved the wedding date up so that Sarah could be in the wedding party before she started showing. The wedding party was a tad unusual, partly because Casey went with Chuck's suggestion when he'd asked Chuck to be his best man, well actually what Chuck did was sit him down in front of the screen and play an excerpt from a TV series episode before telling him that he would be honoured to be his best man, but he thought that this would be better, and right. Therefore, Casey's "best man" was Alex, his daughter, and Chuck and Jeff stood with him as well as the groom's men, while Sarah was the matron of honour and Carina and Ellie were the bride's maids.

Sarah blamed the pregnancy and champagne for bursting out laughing when they were getting ready for the ceremony and blurting out that she never thought that Casey would fall for the old cliché about sleeping with one of the bride's maids at his own wedding. Kathleen looked horrified at her and looked at Ellie and Carina with narrowed eyes, Ellie was swearing blind that it wasn't her and Carina stepped up to her, taking her hands and telling her that yes, she had slept with Casey, but the last time was seven years ago and they'd been playing games with each other's heads between missions (as she glared at Sarah, who only realised at that point exactly how that had sounded and tried to apologise to Kathleen, and Carina).

They all calmed down after that and the ceremony went well. Everyone was happy (except Casey when Kathleen showed him the picture Carina sent her of him handcuffed to the headboard of a bed, wearing only those four leaf clover boxers, and asked with a grin if he'd care to explain?), it was possible that Alex was even more thrilled than her parents were at their wedding. Maybe something like a "normal" life was possible for all of them after all, Sarah and Casey, who had been the USA's two top assassins and spies were both happy and married with children of their own. Chuck went from being a bored, unfulfilled and underutilised computer tech and terrified "asset" to one of the USA's top spies, and back to being a happily married family man with the love of his life. Chuck's parents had been been separated for over 20 years while buried in deep cover with one of the world's worst arms dealers for over 20 years, and on the run for nearly 20 years before being killed and brought back to life respectively were together, with their children and grandchildren (albeit with a new face and identity for Stephen), and Carina had gone from being the governments' most rampant sexbot for most of her adult life, to being happy in an as yet undefined relationship with a nice and special guy. Only a few years ago, none of them had any real belief that they could beat what they were up against, Chuck and Sarah knew what they were desperately hoping for, yet despaired about beating the odds, the others didn't even have that level of hope to hang onto. Most of them had been almost killed many times over, and had killed more than any of them wanted to think about, and they'd had to do other things that would live with them for the rest of their lives but they'd managed to climb out of the pit and they had a shot of living the lives they yearned for, even if half of them didn't believe that they deserved to.


	26. The Great Debate 1

**Not so fluffy this time, Sarah wrestling with worst elements of her past and her demons, probably three parts.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters...**

Sarah sat with the twins and wrestled with her demons, yet again, she was getting sick of these doubts, and she wanted her life back! When she took a step back to look at the problem, she realised that what she needed to do to address this issue was just what she'd been trying to keep away from, talking to Chuck about it. With that resolve she nodded to herself, kissed her sleeping children and went downstairs.

As usual when she was spending her time with the twins, Chuck was working at the screen in the living room. She kissed him and waved at the screen, asking if he could turn it off as she settled on the other end of the lounge, tucking one leg up under her and leaning back against the arm. Chuck quickly shut things down and turned to face her, giving her his full attention. Sarah had trouble getting started and then just leapt into it. "You know the things that I'm having trouble letting go of at the moment, about the things that I've done and what sort of person that makes me?" Chuck nodded, wondering where this was going. "The fact that you don't accept my views on what I am, or at least what I was, is making it hard for me to let it all go and move forward, so I've been thinking, perhaps what I need, here and now, is to for us to debate the issues until we reach an agreement about whether or not I am, or was, something that doesn't deserve a place in this family. You have researched me more thoroughly than anyone else ever has and you have information on nearly everything I was and did, so I was thinking that if we can debate enough of the incidents to reach an agreement on that, maybe I can let it go and we can move forward. Obviously I will be taking take the "for" position on me being unworthy, and you will be taking the "against" position, can you do this for me?" Chuck looked at her with a pained expression, but knowing that what she was actually asking was for him to help her convince herself that she wasn't the monster that she kept telling herself she was, he quietly replied that if she believed that discussing, debating (when she went to correct the term he used) this would help, he would do it, of course. At that she nodded and thanked him, asking whether he wanted to start with the killing, torture or sex? Chuck blanched and gulped at that, before tentatively saying that he presumed that sex was the smallest issue to cover, so perhaps that would be the best for them to start with? Before she could respond he went on to remind her that nothing they discussed would stop him loving her, and that was a fact that she had to accept. Sarah nodded and squeezed his hand before drawing a breath and jumping into the debate.

Sarah started out by stating that the only man other than Chuck that she'd had sex with since she met him was Shaw, and that had been only two times, yes, she'd fallen for his seduction techniques while she was conflicted about Chuck, but she still hadn't been able to turn off her feelings for Chuck and wasn't really receptive, she'd gone through the motions twice but Shaw didn't push the issue after that as it would have been too close to rape for them to maintain a working relationship, let alone a personal one. She also brought up the Lon Kirk mission where he had apparently thought she was going to sleep with Kirk and told him that even though she WAS trying to prove that she was a professional who didn't let her feelings get in the way of the mission to both of them (and Casey) at that point because of how much she'd been thrown off by the kiss at the "bomb" that wasn't a bomb etc, that was never on the cards, the most that she would have allowed was kissing and fondling, she wouldn't have let it go past that. She looked at him to see whether he accepted the truth of what she told him, and was relieved to see the "yes, of course" expression on his face when he nodded. She also told him that she'd still been a virgin when she went into the CIA when she was 17, as she hadn't really had any friends, and certainly hadn't had any boyfriends when she was at school or trying to be "normal". For that matter, her father had never stooped to pushing her into using anything like that in any of the cons that they ran before he went to prison when she was 16, actually as a teenager he'd instead pushed her more and more into the frumpy, awkward look with the braces etc (that you saw the picture of at the reunion) so that she wouldn't attract as much attention, being pretty or memorable wasn't usually a good thing when you were making a living by going around scamming people, because being recognised or remembered made you much more likely to be caught.

To cover off the rest of the indirect CIA related sex incidents she advised that there had been about a dozen times with Bryce (Chuck couldn't hide his surprise at that, as she'd told him that they'd been together for about 2 years). She looked at his reaction and said that it was mostly post mission sex, they hadn't had a real emotional connection (like we have), and it wasn't that wonderful, so while he wanted it more, of course, she usually only gave in when they were on an adrenalin high after a good mission. There were also four or five other times with other agents that she was partnered with before Bryce, and they were all pretty much the same as the times with Bryce. There had also been a couple of times when she was at drunken parties while she was in college studying the subjects that the CIA enrolled her for, but nearly every time other than with him was in some way related to the CIA.

With the easy (indirect) part out of the way, she launched into the debate on what she had done directly as an agent, the training and mission related sex. She wasn't quite sure why she did it the way that she did, or what she was trying to do, shock Chuck, push him to reject her or what, but she laid out the details of the training, and the five incidents in her career where she had actually had sex with a target in a very graphic and confronting manner, keeping her mask locked down in an attempt to hide the self loathing she was feeling as she recounted the details. She described the training in a bit of a faraway voice, as if she was still separating herself from the experience, saying that most of it was instruction, videos and examples (when her voice changed a little as she said that some of it wasn't too bad, Chuck made a mental note to talk to Roan about her training, as he'd indicated that he was part of her training when he and the General stayed for the twins' first birthday weekend, and all of her reactions to Roan showed that she didn't have any issues with him, so the parts that he was involved with had to be at least part of the "not too bad" areas), but there was some direct sex "instruction" and "tests" that she had been made to go through and participate in, and that was when she'd lost her virginity (adding "all of them" in a quieter voice). When she finished the description of her training, not quite managing to keep the expression of disgust off her face, he asked her what would have happened if she had refused or argued any more than she did, to which she looked at him, shocked, realising that he'd even found records relating to her training. After searching for the right words, she responded that Graham had called her and told her that he had been getting reports that she was being uncooperative with her trainers, and that if she didn't do what was expected of her, her father would be relocated to another prison which was largely under the control of a mob family that he'd recently taken for a few hundred thousand, where he probably wouldn't last a week. At that Chuck just asked her whether she'd believed that she had any choice but to do what they'd told her to then? Sarah shook her head with tears in her eyes and Chuck held her and let her cry until she was ready to continue.

The mission related incidents were mostly back when she was a new agent and she had been placed in the position where she had been sent into dangerous situations with not enough (if any) support by superiors who didn't care whether she lived or died, or what happened to her while she was in there, as they placed little value on inexperienced agents, especially women, but she didn't elaborate on that, just laid out the events in graphic detail in a seeming attempt to horrify her husband. She was a little surprised how easily Chuck shot her down arguments in every instance, presenting the information that he'd gleaned from her own and others' mission reports that showed that she would have had little hope of surviving, or that critical missions would have failed, if she hadn't gone through with the actual sex in the positions that she'd been forced into in each of those instances. Each time Chuck shot down her argument, her mask cracked a little and she allowed tears and smiles to escape.

Once she'd conceded to his argument on those points, given that she'd chosen to present all instances for herself, mission and other, Chuck countered with his own activities over the same period. He pointed out that he'd had two other partners (Jill and Hannah) and three instances of sex while they were "broken up" and seeing other people, and that he'd been with Jill and at least four or five others on more than twenty instances back at college, while conceding that he hadn't had sex with anyone else from when he left college until he met her. The "dry" period before he met her notwithstanding, obviously if either of them should be ashamed of what they did in regard to sex, it should be him, and he was ashamed, at least about Jill and Hannah. By this stage, Sarah had closed the space between they and was cuddled up into his chest and crying, letting her tears wash away some of the angst of the subject matter. When her tears had abated a little she raised her head to look at him and pose a query, that being that given the differences in her experiences between him and Bryce, she couldn't understand why the hell Jill would leave HIM to go to Bryce. Chuck shrugged and kissed her on the head, quietly saying that Jill's experiences with him were probably like her's with Bryce, not that wonderful because they hadn't had anywhere near the same emotional connection that he did with her. He gently pulled her chin up to look into her eyes and told her that what they have is almost certainly a once in a lifetime thing, for him anyway, he couldn't imagine feeling this much for another person more than once in a lifetime. Sarah pulled herself up to meet his mouth as she agreed with him and they lost themselves in a kiss and with that finished the debate for that night.

**A/N: I realise (and hope) that people won't "enjoy" these parts, but look at them as filling in the holes. Throughout the series and most fanfics, we have Sarah looking at happiness with Chuck as being something SHE doesn't deserve, because of what she has done in the past. My view was always that the things she did were a result of the circumstances that she had little control over, which were pushed on her by her father and especially by Langston Graham and the CIA, so what I'm trying here is to frame what she did, and what happened to her, in an attempt to show where I think her belief that she is, for want of a better word, damned, has come from. FWIW.**


	27. The Great Debate 2

**Second instalment of exorcising Sarah's demons, not the nicest subjects.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters etc ….**

Sarah slept better than she had in a while the night that she and Chuck had the first round of the debates about her past, but didn't feel up to starting the second round the next night, when she said that to Chuck he just said that they'd do it whenever she wanted and kissed her, there were so many reasons why she loved her husband, but this sort of thing was one of the biggies. Always supportive and prepared, or rather determined, to take things at the pace that was right for her. That had been the way it was when she came back after her memories were wiped, when her father showed his true colours (again), and even in the early days when they were trying to make things work, whenever she had issues to work through he made sure that she set the pace so she was comfortable with the way it went.

So they didn't have round two that night, or the next, but on the third night she felt stable enough to face another round of the angst, in hope that it would result in further release of the anguish like the first round had. So they settled on the lounge again and they started on the second debate, killing.

Sarah didn't deliver the descriptions of her kills with the same focus to shock and confront that she had with the sex issues, after the first round she wasn't as certain that he would be disgusted by what she told him she'd done, and the subject matter didn't directly affect what THEY had in the same way that the sex did, but the subject matter was still very difficult to discuss. As she started she wondered whether Chuck had planned to get the most troubling issue out of the way first, to make the others easier, but realised that that was the benefit that had come from it, anyway. It took Sarah a couple of hours to list the operations and the kills that she'd performed, looking down at her lap the entire time. She started with the ones that Chuck had previously known about, her red test, the French assassins she poisoned as Ilana Trevioux, the men she took out when she rescued Molly as a baby, and Mauser, then went on to the rest of them. Chuck interjected towards the end to ask how many of the kills were collateral damage? His expression changed briefly and then he covered up when she looked up and answered "Seven" with no hesitation at all. When she'd finished Chuck began his rebuttal, he didn't have detailed records on every operation, and some he had to ask question her for the details, so it took rather longer for him to respond than it took for her to list the kills, but while he didn't manage to tear everything apart quite as easily as he did in the first round, he did get her to concede the point on the vast majority of the kills. From the information that both of them had, in every instance she had been presented with plenty of evidence to show that they had a case to answer, and in most instances she'd gone in to recover something as the primary mission, but the other side had initiated the violence.

Then he used his trump card, the collateral damage kills, he went through each instance and drew her out on them, even though it was upsetting her, winding up his argument to show that these proved that she wasn't the unfeeling monster that she claimed she was, those seven people were the only innocents that she'd accepted responsibility for accidentally killing (even conceding that she didn't kill all of them directly), and they only represented less than 3% of the total number, but every detail was seared into her brain, and probably would be for the rest of her life. If she wasn't a caring person, she would not remember those few people who weren't the targets that she'd been given evidence to justify going after so vividly, would she? Chuck also pointed out that his kill count, from his father's rescue mission which included wiping out the Intersect facility and anyone possibly capable of re-starting the Intersect research, plus the few others aside from that mission, was at least ¼ to ½ of her's, and they had no proof that half the personnel wiped out in the mission that he planned and executed weren't more innocent than not, so he had probably earned his designation of monster far more than she had. By the end of the debate Sarah was in tears again, from remembering what she had done and arguing with Chuck about what he said about himself, but conceded that his argument had won her over. As it was well past midnight by that point, they turned everything off and went to bed.

Once again Sarah found that she slept better and was feeling a lot "lighter" from the released anguish that was the outcome of their "debate", but she again felt drained by the experience and it took her a couple more days before she felt up to round three.

Over the next 2 days she decided that round three would be everything else that she was carrying guilt for, the torture, the cons that destroyed people's lives, the seductions that didn't involve actual sex, the lies, deceit, doubts, secrets, fears, cowardice, pushing Chuck away, anything that she had to address that didn't involve screwing someone else or killing people. She was worried, because in her mind there was still plenty of things to be uncovered that could, should, disgust Chuck and make him turn away from her, but she was the one who'd insisted on this, and she was going to finish it!

That night they sat down at the lounge again and she explained that she wanted to cover everything else, the only opposition that Chuck put up to that approach was that they may not be able to cover everything in one night, so they may have to split it up, she thought about that and agreed, saying that she'd go as far as they had the previous time and let him respond, if there was more after that, they'd do that another night. With the new parameters she thought for a bit to reorganise what she wanted to talk about, deciding to cover the CIA related issues first, and then the other after that. With that she launched into it, going over the torture, intimidation, blackmail and what she'd done to seduce targets short of actual sex.

The only time she really stumbled in her delivery was when she was talking about the seductions, she looked at him and essentially pleaded for confirmation that he understood that she'd never used those techniques against him as an agent, that the closest she'd ever come to that was when they were on the dance floor on that first "date" when she needed to distract him while she was handling Casey's NSA agents who were trying to take them. Chuck nodded and said that he knew that, but smiled as he said he did remember a number of times when she'd used them to get what she wanted out of her boyfriend and husband, she nodded and smiled, too, as she squeezed his hand and then went on. Once she'd finished listing her arguments, Chuck presented his rebuttals again. As with the previous round, he didn't have the direct information on every case, and had to get her to provide detail on many of them, but he still managed to present a strong enough case for her to concede the issue in most instances, especially those things that she'd had to do after they'd met each other.

He managed to make her stop and think when he asked if the mission where she was trying to get the belt buckle from Cole would have gone differently before she'd met him, after a while she responded that yes, it probably would have been finished more quickly as she probably would have killed him when things were getting out of hand, rather than trying to subdue him so Chuck didn't have to see the body. Chuck looked at her and pointed out that she'd basically proved his point again there, she would have killed him as the "proper" and more expedient way of handling an enemy agent who was attacking her at the time, but she hadn't considered going through with the sex as the easier way of getting what she needed and getting out. Their approach to these debates was to be brutally honest on everything, and he accepted that she was honouring that approach, so she was confirming that she wasn't anywhere near as morally and ethically compromised as she was trying to tell herself she was, at that Sarah looked at him, a trifle stunned, as she realised that he was right.

By the end, it was well after midnight again, and once again Chuck had convinced her that her actions were not unreasonable given the information that she was presented with, the people she was dealing with, and the pressure she was put under by her superiors. He'd opened her eyes to the fact that she was basically an impressionable young woman being told by the people that she believed she had to trust and depend on that what she was being sent in to do was all to protect the decent people around her. The main differences between her and other agents was 1) she was a better person than most of them, trying to do the right thing (and protect her father), 2) the agency had gotten their hooks into her when she was in her mid-teens, rather than 5-6 years later, so she didn't have much experience to help her to recognise or counter the misinformation that she was being fed, and 3) she was far more effective in nearly every field than just about everyone else (something that Casey had confirmed time and time again, and he was also up there near her level in most areas, except seduction). So she was coming to accept Chuck's view as being correct in most areas, that what she'd done on most missions had not been the actions of a monster, but rather those of someone trying to do the right thing, on the basis of strong evidence that the people she was up against were, basically, what she'd been regarding herself as in recent years, and that they were intent on causing mayhem to people who didn't deserve it. With that, they wound up the 3rd session, and went to bed.

While the effects of each round were getting less, Sarah still felt drained afterwards (letting go of that much deep seated anguish took a lot out of you, she found), so once again it was 2 days before she felt up to doing the final round, admitting for the first time in her life what she'd done with her father (and alone while he was incarcerated) for the 9 years before Graham got him sent away to "protect him", and the other things she'd done to Chuck and others.

Once again, they settled in on the lounge and she started into presenting her case, first going through the cons that she'd run with her father and alone in chronological order, then talking about the things that she'd done outside of the CIA bulwark, how she'd appropriated money etc from missions to set up safe houses and escape plans, how she'd blackmailed people to make her plans work or keep her secrets, how she'd lied to and betrayed Chuck in the first 3 years, at least, up until the point where they were finally together, how she'd kept secrets from him, even after she'd forced him to agree to her "No secrets, no lies." mandate, and how she'd hurt him with Bryce, Cole and Shaw. When she was talked out, she sat there, looking down at her lap as she waited for him to respond, knowing that he could, and perhaps should, reject her for what she'd told him. When Chuck didn't speak for a while she looked up to see him looking at her with his usual expression for her, and then he leaned in to kiss her and ask her what he'd said to her when he agreed to do this with her? "that nothing we discussed would stop you loving me?" He nodded, and told her to remember that, then kissed her again and began his rebuttal.

Again, he had to pull details from her for some of his arguments, as the records he could locate were rather spotty in these areas, but he focussed on HER intent, rather than her father's, on the cons, her level of remorse, and the fact that she was a child for at least most of the period she was doing that, once again, as far as the cons went, she had to admit that she attempted to harm others as little as possible, and the ones where people's lives had been ruined were pretty much all of her father's doing, and she'd argued with him on most of them, the cons that she'd pulled by herself had been small scale, just enough to live on and get away from the nasty foster home environments she'd been in (they also discussed the close calls she'd had with her foster "fathers" or "brothers" in some of those foster homes), so she could get back to her father when he was released from prison. When he covered the misappropriation of money from missions to set up escape clauses he mostly had to get the details from her, but got confirmation that re-directing the money didn't harm any individuals, and probably prevented it being used for something worse by others. The blackmailing of people to complete her plans and keep them a secret was a muddy point, but the details he got from her about the people involved showed that they were the type to do far more wrong than she was doing, so they certainly weren't innocents, in fact that was how she knew that she could make them cooperate, they had all done things that they SHOULD be punished for, but they weren't the worst she dealt with, those who were a danger to others.

After the incidents involving others had been addressed, he went onto the things between them that she was feeling guilty about, the lies, secrets and the other guys, he smiled to himself at that point, as he KNEW that he had arguments to easily refute what she was saying here. First he ran through the lies that she told him about their relationship being nothing but a cover, yes he'd been hurt and upset, but that was mainly because he knew almost as well as everyone else did that they weren't true, it took him a while to really understand why she had to keep saying that (the 49B made it pretty damn clear), and even then he hadn't had the history of how she'd been used and abused by the intelligence community so he couldn't understand the depth of her fear that she'd be tossed out and he'd be thrown in a hole at some petty superior's whim, but for the most part he knew that she wasn't telling the truth in her heart when she told him those things. As far as the betrayals, the ones that upset her the most were when she considered taking him in before they ran off to Barstow, and the fact that she gave him his orders for his red test. Barstow was an easy one for him to address, pointing out that she told him the truth and ran away with him about 10-15 seconds later, she tried to say that that was just because of what he said, but he shook his head, saying with conviction that she'd walked in conflicted about what she was doing and she would have stopped before they got across the parking lot. On the red test, he reminded her that she'd tried to talk him out of it, as much as she could with Shaw listening, and pointed out that he'd tried to arrest Perry in the rest room, but he broke away and ended up trying to shoot him, which was why Casey shot him. Sarah stared at him asking what he was talking about, and only then did he realise that he had never told her, or anyone else, about that, so he explained that he'd known that he wasn't a killer and went to arrest Perry and bring him in, but Perry had broken away and when he'd chased him down in the railway yards Perry pulled a gun on him, which was when Casey shot him.

As for the secrets, as they'd discussed when they went after Reiker, that secret was Molly's and Emma's, they were the ones at risk if the secret was exposed and therefore she was keeping it to protect them, not herself. The other secrets about the money and safe houses, she hadn't REALLY kept them a secret, she had raised them when she was talking about or planning for them to go on the run. She hadn't gone into detail but nor had she covered them up, he got that that was part of what she felt ashamed about, what she did to set them up, but that was yet again proof that she wasn't the person she thought she was, because she WAS ashamed of those things, if she was unfeeling, she wouldn't have cared.

On the matter of Bryce, Cole and Shaw, he knew that Bryce had kissed her and she hadn't immediately pushed him away, but she DID push him away and it didn't happen again except on the mission, he understood that there was a bit of conflict due to their history together, but accepted that she'd moved on from him, even though it had taken him a while to accept that (he looked at her with that and she nodded, reaching for his hand). Cole, he'd just dumped her for Lou and all but pushed her at Cole, yes it hurt when he saw them kissing on the security monitor (she looked up at him quickly as she hadn't known that), but he accepted that she told him that nothing else else had happened, he hadn't "buttered her muffin" as he'd told Chuck he wanted to (after Chuck told him that they didn't have a personal relationship), and she'd told him that Cole had accepted that she chose Chuck over him, so that one could be closed off, too? She nodded and he continued. Shaw probably hurt the most as she started a relationship with him, but once again, he'd dumped her and then started a relationship with Hannah, and all but pushed her at Shaw, so he could hardly cast any blame her way when he was doing more than she was, and she'd already told him that she'd fallen for Shaw's seduction techniques as she was in a spin about how she felt about Chuck, and Chuck's relationship with Hannah (which I was watching on the monitors, Sarah interjected quietly), so there was no reason to feel guilt there, either.

With that said, he once again countered with what he'd been doing over the same period, he'd "broken up" with her multiple times because he was upset as he couldn't handle being around her, but not being with her, all those times, and because Bryce spun him a line about how Sarah was being put at risk when she was getting too close to him. He left her for Lou, he left her for Jill, and he left her for Hannah, he'd been going further with Lou than she did with Cole, he'd had sex with both Jill and Hannah, AND he was rubbing her face in it like an unfeeling bastard. So what she'd done in regard to him in that period made her look like an angel compared to what he'd done to the woman that he loved, if anyone should be asking for forgiveness it should be him, could she see it in her heart to forgive him for all the things he'd done to her?

Sarah just launched herself into his arms and kissed him. After a suitably long and loving kiss she relaxed into his arms and he asked if the demons had all been exorcised now? She nodded and reached up to kiss him again, thanking him and saying that she'd got that out of her head, for now anyway, she couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't come back again, but if they did they'd handle that when it happened? (looking up at him with the question in her eyes) Chuck nodded and kissed her on the head, saying "Of course, I love you." She snuggled in with a smile, saying "Love you more." With that they went to bed, another late night but worth it was the thought going through both their heads as they headed upstairs.


	28. Good Tmes

**Oh Joy, Stalker Boi's back. Don't know where your petty li'l vendetta is coming from, as I haven't done anything to you, yet. BTW: Trying to use "guest reviews" to hide who you are when you make your attacks doesn't work when you leave your signature all over them.**

**This one's been hard to write, got about 1300 words in and then wiped it all out and started again, possibly off due to Stalker Boi's return?**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters etc.**

The others had noticed that Sarah had been getting progressively less depressed and edgy throughout the weeks leading up to Casey and Kathleen's wedding, but everyone knew to wait for her to tell them what was going on when she was ready. Most of them were just happy to take the fact that she was herself again as being good enough.

With Sarah back in a better space, the final preparations for Casey and Kathleen's wedding kicked back into high gear, as the matron of honour being off her game had been holding things up a little. While Sarah had managed to exorcise her demons (with Chuck's help), she was still going through all the same issues with the second pregnancy as she did with the first one, down to the fact that they'd just found out that she was having twins again, so she wasn't really up to speed, but half speed for Sarah was at least as good as full speed for just about anyone else, so she was still up to the job. Casey and Kathleen had decided that they were going to have the wedding and reception at Castle Carmichael, as they had the facilities and room for everything that was needed there, which made it easier for everyone as they could fit the wedding preparation and their "normal" work in without having to run off for one or the other half the time.

The wedding went off well, there weren't many people there, just the "Clan", plus a number of Kathleen's friends and family from the time that she'd been alone (the only thing that Kathleen was upset about at all was that they couldn't invite any of her or Casey's family who may recognise and remember him as Alex Coburn, as that would have given the game away and exposed him), and very special few who outside of the "Clan" who rated inclusion in their special day, like the General and Roan. Casey was still limited in his movement etc, but like Sarah, Casey at half capacity was at least as good as most at full capacity, so it didn't hold him back that much.

While Roan was there, Chuck took him aside for a talk about Sarah's training. As he'd expected, Roan hadn't known about the other aspects of Sarah's training (though he wasn't that surprised, given the type of "people" involved), as what records that existed were hidden and Sarah hadn't been able to trust anyone enough to tell them about it at the time. He had an idea of some of the people who may have been involved, and told Chuck that he'd do his best to find out through contacts who it was and let him know (as these things had been "off the books", so there were very few records of them for Chuck to dredge up). True to his word, he came back to Chuck less than a month later with the names of the ones he'd managed to identify. As they'd both already been relatively certain, the one who had been behind it all was Langston Graham, and unfortunately they couldn't get to him now (though there was an unexplained explosion which tore his grave and remains apart), but Chuck could get to the others. Roan offered (pleaded, actually) to help, but Chuck told him that he needed to do this himself. Over the next month or so Chuck went off on a number of "business trips" (by himself as neither Sara or Casey were up to much travelling unless necessary), and due to the distraction of the pregnancy issues, Sarah didn't immediately pick up on the fact that he was doing the same thing as he'd been planning with the Rome trip.

Unfortunately for the ones who had had fun with Sarah's "training", the Intersect included everything known about "enhanced interrogation" techniques, and the one who "talked" to them wasn't Chuck, it was a darker being inside who wanted to punish those had harmed the one that he loved so much. The ones who admitted what they'd done, gave him the intel he was after and showed some (any) remorse were processed relatively quickly, for the ones who held out or gloated about what they'd done, well it took rather longer. When Chuck finished, he was conflicted, on one hand, he was horrified by what he had done, but on the other hand, he was glad that the ones who had done that to Sarah were dealt with, and that there was no way that they would do it to anyone else ever again, it was pretty much impossible to harm people from where they went to. He had also left messages with each of the bodies which made it understood (to those with the necessary background information) why they had been dealt with, to dissuade the agencies involved from continuing in those practices. It wouldn't identify Sarah as they obviously (and admittedly) had also done what they did to her to other women, so anyone still around was being sent a message about what could/would happen to them if they persisted with these practices. Appealing to the conscience of that type was a wasted effort, putting a very real fear of vengeance into them, though, that worked, as most of the ones who'd been dealt with were still with the agencies and would have had the same protections as anyone still around would have, so they were being shown that they were open to retribution if they persisted in doing these things.

Sarah wasn't distracted enough to miss what he'd done when the reports started filtering through about what had been happening, so after the twins had been put to bed one night she sat Chuck down to discuss it. Chuck didn't try to cover up what he'd done (or that he'd gone to do this without her again), he'd had every expectation that she'd work it out as soon as she heard, he just wanted to handle it for her, and to make an effort to prevent it from happening to others. He shared one piece of information that he'd extracted from them, which was that only agents who were flagged as potentially being high value were put through that special "training", and that was only under under orders from quite high up. Sarah was mainly upset that he'd delved into those aspects of the life that they were trying to put behind them which tended to be soul destroying, but she could see in his eyes that while he was affected by what he'd done, the reasons that he'd done it had managed to save his soul, and he was still her Chuck. As he said to her, it wasn't just retribution, or revenge, it was also an attempt to prevent other women from having to go through anything like she had. They did argue for a while but she couldn't fault his reasons for doing it, and she was a little surprised to find that she slept better that night, knowing that those who had done that to her couldn't do it to anyone else, ever again. Thinking afterwards, she also hoped that the others who had gone through similar things may have gotten a release from what they were going through, hearing that those who had done those things to them had been dealt with, and why.

Given the additional intel that Chuck dredged up in his interrogations, neither Sarah nor Chuck were at all surprised when Carina came up to kiss him and hung onto him for quite a while as she sobbed, the signs were clear that she'd also been in that program. Nor was it much of a surprise when his mother came up to kiss him on the cheek and hug him, either, though it WAS a surprise when Casey came up to enfold him in a bone crushing hug. None of the others knew what was going on, as only the core group were in a position to hear about the messages that had been left with the corpses and decipher their meaning. When a message came through from the General which just said "Thank you Chuck", he wasn't sure whether she'd worked it out herself, or Roan had told her, but it didn't matter, he knew that she wouldn't out him for what he did.

Afterwards, things went back to normal for Clan Carmichael, or as normal as they got for them. Contracts were still coming in and they were all covering a fairly heavy workload, pumping out the information that the agencies were after. Business trips to clients' facilities were a relatively common part of the work they did, but now any necessary trips were handled much quicker than before. In addition to the prepayment for the Hypermach SonicStar, they'd pumped a couple of billion into Hypermach from the funds that they'd put aside from wiping out the criminal organisation, which had shaved about four or five years off the development schedule for the SonicStar, so they now had hypersonic transports to make their trips around the world in a fraction of the time they used to. Casey continued to improve, Sarah's pregnancy was progressing well, and everyone was happy, strange though that may be with their backgrounds and the space that they still worked in.

The routines in Clan Carmichael hadn't changed much, Chuck and Sarah still had the twins to chase/look after, which was becoming more Chuck's job as Sarah was starting to get weighed down by the new twins' impending arrival. Chuck and Stefan normally worked from Castle Carmichael, anyway, for the same reasons as before, as most of the load on the Castle Computer was generated by the two of them. As Casey was improving, he worked in the CI offices more often so that there was one of the CI partners in the office in case there were walk in clients (and to keep an eye on Alex when Beau came around). Most of the others still worked out of Castle Carmichael.

Aside from the usual work, Chuck and Stefan were working together on building reduced functionality versions of the technology that they designed and built for CI's use. The AR headsets and equipment were a nice money and good will spinner from the intelligence community and they'd managed to ensure to a high degree of comfort that the government techs could not extract any of CI's intellectual property, so they looked at their other gear and were re-working some of the lines so that they could offer them on a similar basis, like the communications infrastructure, it couldn't really be used for "bad" purposes, and a network that was very secure and almost untraceable was of great use and therefore in great demand from the intelligence community. So, reworking the native CI equipment into a dumbed down version that would "brick" itself if anyone tried to tamper with it was a project which promised to reap serious benefits for CI (not that they needed more money, but they had to keep up appearances).

There was one piece of technology that the agencies that they'd done operations with wanted badly, but they didn't want to release, their air pistols and air rifles. Chuck had designed and built far better versions of the tranq guns that he preferred to use when he had the time to work on them, and they worked so well that most of CI had converted from "normal" firearms to them, they had a 1 CM bore and used 3 magazines, the primary axial one above the barrel, and two smaller tube mags on either side of the barrel, this meant that a) it was possible to carry a lot of rounds on the weapon, and b) it could be loaded with 3 different types of ammunition, eg "normal" slugs, tranq darts and armour piercing slugs. The controls on the weapons selected the feed (mag), single fire or 3 rd burst, and the "charge", normal, subsonic or high power, and the camera and targeting computer built into the weapons fed corrected targeting information back to the AR glasses of the user for the range, round, charge etc, so when the target was properly framed, it almost always meant that it would be hit, the fact that the user could be behind a barrier with only the weapon exposed was another benefit, as was the display of the number of rounds left in each mag.

Anyway, Chuck designed and built a 24 CM long pistol that was centred over the hand with the barrel low for better handling characteristics and an 85 CM long assault rifle with similar handling characteristics, and they worked well enough that Casey, Sarah and most of the others also changed over to using them exclusively over their previous favourite firearms for most functions, but their effectiveness was the very reason that they didn't want to release them, they didn't want to put weapons like that in the hands of people they didn't trust, especially as the engineering cold be copied, even after they set up the control system to be "bricked" if tampered with (they'd already retrofitted "bricked" versions of the control chips into all their weapons to prevent a lost or stolen weapon being used to copy the system). They still got the "requests" on a monthly basis, and they'd have a quick discussion and then politely decline, and they were hopeful that the agencies never found out about the Thumper, as that would be an even harder argument to refuse (Chuck had also built a single user/carry rail gun that threw a 4 CM slug or projectile at close to "normal" rail gun velocities to give them something to handle bunkers or armoured vehicles if they came up against them on operations, that sort of thing would be the holy grail for most military organisations).

So CI was still delivering what their clients wanted, and were providing some technology enhancements for the government organisations that they felt that they could trust to some degree, but were fighting to keep technology that they didn't feel they could trust outsiders with as CI internal only.


	29. Double Trouble

**NB: Yes, I did see the probability rates on fraternal twins, thanks, that's why they're two for two ;^) Another fun factoid on that is that fraternal twins come from the mother's side, not the father's, so Sarah has less reason to wanna kill Chuck for doing this to her again ;^)**

**On the other, yes, I know that this was a departure from normal Chuck, but don't forget that he always tries to do the right thing and protect others, so aside from getting retribution on those who had harmed Sarah, IMO he'd want to prevent something like that from happening to others if he could.**

**Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters...**

The last few months of Sarah's second pregnancy went by without any significant problems, Chuck managed to keep the twins under control so they didn't upset her, and she was relatively comfortable, so it was all good. When the day came, they got to the hospital with plenty of time to spare and Sarah was settled into her room, with the twins happily playing in the corner. The only people coming in from out of town this time were Zondra, and Diane and Roan, so they'd sent one of the SonicStar's to pick them up. When Chuck quietly asked Sarah if she wished that her father was there, she gave him one of her death stares, but then relented and shook her head, saying that they were better off with him out of their lives, and pulled her husband down for a kiss. Out in the waiting room, the atmosphere was a lot happier, with less tension than the last time, as they weren't trying to hide someone on the most wanted list from the government figures and his estranged wife, everyone here now was part of the Clan, whether or not they lived in Castle Carmichael.

The new twins were rather easier on their mother than their older siblings were, with less than 4 hours labour before Jaqueline Faye arrived, and only another 15 minutes after that before Piotr Stephen arrived. While Yvonne and Zach were spitting images of their mother, Jaqueline and Piotr took after their father more, with his hair and eyes, though it looked like they'd have their mother's features, something that made Chuck happy, as that meant that they'd have another two beautiful children. Most importantly, of course, they were both strong and healthy. Once the Clan had all seen the new twins and Yvonne and Zach had gone home with their grandmothers, Sarah and Chuck were having their quiet time with the latest additions to the family. Sarah looked across to Chuck to suggest that it may be time for him to get the snip, as they had four beautiful children now and coming along two at a time was getting a bit much. Chuck just smiled and leaned over to kiss her gently as he agreed with a laugh, saying that four was enough, and as neither of them had any intentions of being with anyone else it was easier and less intrusive for him to get fixed than it was for her. As everything had been a lot easier this time, Sarah and the new twins only stayed in overnight to ensure that there were no complications and then Chuck brought them home the next morning. Zondra, Diane and Roan were staying for the next week or so to catch up on their baby/family time before going back to the spy world where there was no place for those things.

Chuck and Sarah were trying to decide whether it was a good or bad thing that they still remembered quite clearly what it was like after bringing Yvonne and Zach home from the hospital, on one hand they knew what they were in for, on the other, well, they knew what they were in for. They did agree on one thing, though, they had been crazy to think that having 4 children under 3 was really a workable option with everything else they had on their plates, they lived in a state of perpetual exhaustion. It didn't help that Jaqui and Piotr were as fussy as Yvonne had Zach had been through the early months either. The thing was, they had plenty of help at hand, both grandmothers, Stefan, Ellie, Kathleen and Alex, Jeff, even Casey and Carina suspended their fear of babies for the children of two of the people they loved most in the world, and for the first week they had Zondra, Diane and Roan who were also ready to suspend their fear of babies to spend time with them.

Ultimately, though, their needs had to be mainly dealt with by their parents, in particular Sarah, so she was wiped out most of the time, she woke from a nap one afternoon after feeding them yet again to hear a guitar playing softly and someone singing in the kids' room and was intrigued, so she slipped down the hall to see Chuck sitting on the floor with Yvonne and Zach laying next to him, and Jaqui and Piotr in their cribs, all fast asleep as he softly played the guitar and sang to them, what surprised her the most was that his playing and singing were so exquisite. She leaned against the door jam and listened to him, not at all surprised that his music could sooth their savage little beasts, as it was soothing her as she listened. After a while she went over to kiss him on the top of the head (she enjoyed being able to turn the tables on him with that at times, she loved it when he did it to her but he was too damned tall for her to do it back to him most of the time), he looked up with a smile and she leaned down to kiss his lips, before asking why she'd never known he could do this before? He helped her settle down beside him before he answered, saying that he'd only ever played when he was alone, and he'd stopped playing and singing altogether when he left Stanford (after Jill and Bryce did what they did to him, Sarah thought), he didn't have the drive to go back to it for years after that, and then when his life started turning around and he was motivated again, other things took precedence over music (pausing to lean in for a kiss).

What changed was when he was sitting with Yvonne and Zack while she was trying to get some rest one day (Sarah remembered how one of them had to be in the room with them at all times for SO long or they just wouldn't settle), and his old guitar was sitting up on the shelf, so he got it down and started playing. They seemed to like that so he started singing to them and then they went off to sleep, just like that, so he kept doing it whenever he sat with them to try and let her get the rest she needed, and these two (indicating the cribs) were apparently the same, so the practice was being continued. She smiled and leaned in for a kiss again before saying that while she appreciated the rests, she was put out that she'd been missing out on this (touching the guitar), because it was so beautiful. She looked him in the eye and said, "I get my share of this from now on, OK? Not just the kids." He grinned and agreed, but said that it was nothing much, a tad surprised when she turned serious and said with tears in her eyes that it was NOT nothing much, it was wonderful and beautiful and she was furious that they'd managed to lock it away from her and the rest of the world for so long by what they'd done. Chuck put the guitar down and pulled her into his arms, he didn't have to ask who "they" were, that was obvious. It only occurred to him at that point to ask how she knew he wasn't using the Intersect? She smiled and said that whenever he used the Intersect he'd have a serious (for want of a better word) look on his face, but this (waving at him and the guitar) was obviously all him, it was natural and relaxed, just MY Chuck.

Once Zondra, Diane and Roan had had their baby time and went back to their world, things settled into the "normal" routines for Chuck, Sarah and the rest of the Clan, Sarah mainly focussed on the kids and did pieces of work when she had a chance (the CI technology meant that they could sit down anywhere with the AR glasses and a keyboard/controller and get half an hour, or however long they had's work in, so she could fit it in between looking after the kids). Chuck did what he could with the kids, and especially Yvonne and Zach, to take the load off Sarah, including their nap time serenades (though Sarah joined in on those now she knew what she'd been missing out on, and she found that that quality of the rest she got when she went off to his serenades was far better than what she'd been getting curled up in bed by herself while he kept the kids quiet), and managed to cover off most of his normal load in regard to the computer work, he'd always needed far less sleep than Sarah (or most people for that matter), so he'd quite often work through much of the night while she slept. He'd never forget the day that it dawned on Sarah, what the reason the babies didn't sleep as much as they'd been led to expect was (as they took after him on that respect), his arm was black and blue for days after she repeatedly punched him in the arm to punctuate her points while she was telling him that she couldn't get enough sleep because HIS children didn't sleep much, and they got that from HIM. Sarah did feel bad about beating him up (literally) over that, but she'd been getting progressively more frazzled and exhausted in the first couple of months after Yvonne and Zack were born and when it clicked as to why their children wouldn't sleep much, well she got a bit angry.

One day when Sarah was downstairs with Ellie and Chuck was upstairs with the kids, she heard him playing and singing to the kids over the baby monitor and turned it up, asking Ellie whether she knew that he did that. Ellie looked shocked, saying "That's Chuck?" as she pointed to the baby monitor, Sarah nodded with a smile. Ellie said nothing as she listened to him for a while and then looked up at Sarah and said "He sings like an angel" in awe, then she shook her head and said that no, she never knew that he could do that. Sarah quietly passed on what Chuck had told her when she caught him singing to the kids that day, with Chuck's voice and music in the background as she did so. Ellie asked why he'd hide something like that, in the same almost whisper, to which Sarah shrugged, pointing out that he was the same way with most things he was so exceptional at. Chuck was always self depreciating, refusing to believe that he was so amazing, so she wasn't really surprised that he did this about his music as well. They decided that they'd get Stefan to set up something to let them record the sessions off the baby monitor so that they could keep this, for themselves if no-one else.

As with the first time, Sarah started back into her exercise and training routine within a few weeks of getting home from the hospital, to get back into shape as soon as possible. Of course, with their 50% bigger family now, they had to rethink their transport options a little, Sarah's Shooting Brake couldn't carry the two bassinets and two kid seats in the back, and Chuck's SportBrake wasn't much better, so if they were all going somewhere together, they needed a new family car. They went with a heavily modified 4th Gen Euro model Honda Odyssey, uprated engine and drive train, all wheel drive, uprated suspension and brakes, composite armour to handle up to .50 cal or more and they even mounted thumpers front and rear to deal with attackers. It carried all of them with a spare seat left, was close to Sarah's Shooting Brake in performance and handling and could handle any expected level of attacks, it may not come up to the Shooting Brake (or the SportBrake for that matter) in style, but it met their needs, so Chuck passed his SportBrake off to his mother and adopted the Odyssey as his car (Sarah loved her Shooting Brake and he still didn't want to face the idea of suggesting to her that she drive a soccer mom minivan, even one that was at the specs that their's was).

When Jaqui and Piotr were about 4 months old, CI accepted another big project from the intelligence community, which was another long all of CI gig. They handled it pretty much the same as the last big gig, with Casey, Carina and Alex working out of the office with Josie and Bella, and the rest working out of Castle Carmichael most of the time. The new, upgraded Castle Computer meant that Chuck and Stefan could chew through vast swathes of the Internet far quicker than they'd managed in the past, so they were getting the second string hits much faster than they had previously. As per the process that they had in place now, Chuck and Sarah and Stefan and Ellie were working together in pairs to pull more first string triggers out of the computer generated flood of possibilities that they were being presented with.

The targets of the new operation were the group of criminal organisations that rose to fill the vacuum after CI orchestrated the disappearance of the organisation which used to rule the roost over the rest. None of the new players were as big as that one had been individually, but together they were several times its size, which made this operation that much bigger. The parameters for their engagement were identical to the previous operation, except that they were adamant that no CI personnel would have any involvement in any physical operations.

Over half the attendees of the teleconference had had previous experience of dealing with CI, so they weren't at all surprised by the CI people holding babies while talking to them, or when a couple of adorable toddlers popped up to say goodbye to "Aunty Diane" at the end of a session. When the others started making comments about these unprofessional practices in separate conferences without CI, it wasn't the General who bluntly pointed out that while CI was rather unconventional, they got results that no-one else could, so if the complainers didn't want to work with them, arrangements would be made via their own heads of state for them to be replaced in the operation, as Carmichael Industries couldn't be replaced. Most of the newcomers were outraged that their peers would suggest that their positions were less important than some dinky little private company, and were therefore shocked to find that they DID get replaced (basically with their careers finished), because they hadn't been cleared high enough to know that their own heads of state had already dealt with that "dinky little private company" more than once, and many of them regarded CI as a significant reason that their administrations were on a solid footing at that time.

While the operation parameters were being discussed in the teleconference, Chuck and Sarah could see the twinkle in the General's eye as she looked at them, obviously thinking about the fact that the hidden CI coffers would be rather large by the time they finished this operation. When the General thanked Sarah for the lovely album she'd sent her, while looking at Chuck with an appraising expression on her face, Chuck turned to look at Sarah. As soon as they were off the call he asked what the General was talking about, she tried to look innocent as she said that she'd come across some music that was lovely and she thought it would be nice to share. Chuck's expression was halfway between resigned and angry as he asked how many had heard it now, looking only slightly mollified when the list given was only Ellie, your parents, mom, Carina, and the General, and she pointed out that Carina had only heard when she walked in as she and Ellie were listening to the recording that they'd made of him singing to the kids. She came up to Chuck and took his face in her hands, saying that his music was wonderful and magical, and when Ellie heard it over the baby monitor she'd agreed that it couldn't be forgotten, so they got Stefan to set things up so they could record it. They shared it with his parents, and her mother, and Carina walked in so her price to keep quiet was a copy, and the General had been having a bad time when she was talking to her because Roan was away, so she sent her a copy to cheer her up. She knew that he didn't want the whole world to know about it, and while she thought that was a shame she was trying to honour that, but she still thought it should be shared with the people they loved (this last with a question in her eyes as she looked into his). Chuck grudgingly agreed and went to turn away but she hung onto him, looked him in the eye and talked to him until she was sure that he did actually forgive her.

With their refusal to be involved in the physical operations, things didn't go as well as they did in the previous operations, as the local organisation's people were less competent than CI's operatives, and without direct interaction it was more difficult to ascertain which people they were dealing with had been compromised. Therefore, it was far more of an iterative process than the previous operation had been, and they had to track down rather more leads to determine to what level individuals in the relative organisations were compromised. The cyber operations were still going well, it was relying on other organisations that wasn't working out the way it should.

Because of these hold-ups, the operation dragged out for a months longer than they'd planned, but they were steadily extracting what was needed and destroying any record that it had existed. Local agencies in the respective countries were rounding up and processing the personnel of the organisations (though with less success in extracting information from them than CI'd had), and were seizing physical assets that they found. They were also rounding up the politicians and public servants who had been connected to the criminal organisations (including some who had been part of the operation themselves, they'd been taken out of the loop about anything relating to them as soon as the links had been discovered. When this happened, there were discussions at the head of state level and alternate organisations were tasked with the apprehension and removal of the bad apples).

With all the hold-ups, it was over 9 months before the target organisations were broken, and the clean up operations were still ahead. Jaqui and Piotr had had their first birthday, Yvonne and Zach had had their fourth birthday in the meantime, and the operation was still looking bigger than Ben Hur.

The General and Roan (and Zondra) came out for both birthday parties. As with Jaqui and Piotr's birth, Sarah sent one of the SonicStars to fly them to and from LA, and flew them in from the airport on one of their S-97s, so their trips took a fraction of the time they would have if they came by commercial or military transports.

Part of the agenda for ensuring that Zondra was flown in at every opportunity was to give Sarah and Carina every chance to talk her into joining CI\. Zondra was part of the family, and had been part of their lives even longer than the rest of CI, so the girls wanted her to be there, safe with them, rather than out there among the scum bags that had been trying to take them all down most of their lives. (That was also one of the prime reasons that Zondra was Jaqui and Piotr's god mother, to try to remind her that she should be there with her family, not off by herself.) While Zondra was inclined to agree, the main thing holding her back was her sense of loyalty to the government. She hadn't been betrayed and abused by the organisations that she'd worked for to the same level that Sarah and Carina had been (for her sake they were glad about that, but it didn't help their cause), so she wasn't quite as disillusioned about the "greater good" bullshit as they were. It was actually Carina who came up with the best person to talk Zondra into changing over, so she arranged with Kathleen (to avoid Kathleen getting the wrong idea about why her husband was spending time with another woman) for Zondra and Casey to have a long heart to heart about the true state of affairs, what the government had done to the people who had been faithful to it and done everything asked of them for their whole lives, Zondra came away from that discussion with a very different view of the world she lived in. The fact that Chuck also got the General to talk to her and corroborate what Casey had told her made her decision rather easier, and by the time she headed back from Yvonne and Zack's birthday party, she had her resignation paperwork ready to be submitted.

The clean up operations from the new operation took another 3 months after they'd broken the organisations, and then CI was clear of it and back to their "normal" operations, they'd been tied up with that for over a year, and were so glad to be done with it. The hidden offshore funds that CI controlled now stood at around $1.05 trillion after the funds had been removed from the organisations and all records going back to the organisations erased, as per the original operation. The scope of the CI funds would have caused apoplexy in governments around the world if they knew, but no government hacks could ever backtrack through the layers of controls, smoke and mirrors that Chuck and Stefan laid over everything they did, so the government people would never know.

When Zondra was released from her agency and came to join them, she moved in with Carina and Jeff, as they had a rather large house for 2 people (all the houses in Castle Carmichael were big, effectively 5-6 bedrooms or more, most had at least a couple of rooms set aside as offices and home gyms, but these could be re-purposed if necessary as there were always the larger offices, gym, dojo etc down in the bunkers). As Zondra was being brought up to speed on the CI way and processes, she was brought into the projects that made up most of CI's workflow, basically as an add on to the team that Carina and Jeff normally formed.

So Carmichael Industries had re-acquired an old team member and settled down to churning out the jobs that they were pretty sure to have a never ending supply of. Chuck and Sarah were getting back to the point where they could get some sleep at night, but were being run ragged chasing two four year olds and another two who were a year and a half, and everyone else was getting on with their lives. Pretty much a "normal" life by their standards I guess.

**A/N: It's been pointed out that this would be a logical place to wind things up for Where Do We Go To, especially as new topics to write about are starting to dry up for me. Thanks for reading, hope some people enjoyed this to some extent. If people are interested in reading more, let me know, it'd probably help me get off me arse and make an effort to write more if people want to read it.**


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